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The brief 



ADVENTURES IN THE COURTS 
OF A NEW COUNTRY AND INCI- 
DENTAL STUDIES IN THE MOR- 
BID ANATOMY OF GOVERNMENT 
BY ORGANIZED CORRUPTION 



BY 

The counselor 



HYDE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY 
HYDE PARK, MASSACHUSETTS 



i^fl 



COPYRIGHT, 191 8, BY 

HYDE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY 

MASS ACHUSETTS 



MAY 



918 



©CU494976 



^^^ \ 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 

The Bible suggests that God was the first 
Judge. That being so, a judiciary is too sacred 
a power to abuse: and those who do not take the 
succession reverently are not morally qualified 
for the bench. 

All this, and a great deal more, is extract 
from a diary, corroborated by indisputable facts, 
and true. Hamlet complains of insolence of 
office. High offices are secured by skillful ad- 
vertising, secret influence, and other forms of 
bribery: and hypocrites obtain appointive jobs 
and salaries in the gift of those so elect at your 
expense. Readers are variously impressed: One 
item of our diarist's, entitled "The Black Hand," 
in a booklet of sketches called "Tears and Smiles" 
of some years ago, for instance, brought forth 
the question of eminent students whether -social 
degenerates, so called, do not, after all, display 
more love for their fellow men than does the 
average of the public pay-roll: or is it a case of 
extremes meeting, — those above the law, bureau- 
crats, and those beyond, anarchists .^^ 

We have seen mouths water with joy over the 
imposition upon the Shy lock who never lived: 
and the objects of the rapture neither saw the 
farce in the play nor the corrupt license of the 
plot to rob, or knew that the pound of flesh law 
never was. lago, the detestable scoundrel of 

3 



4 PREFACE 

the officer class, utters the finest sentiments of 
gentleman and good-fellow; Antony, the forger, 
hypocrite, low-life, and thief, is the great orator. 
Millions of people cannot see in Christianity 
much more substantial than a pretext for hate, 
the profit of robbing and the fun of killing: and 
to other millions it is a business card. There is 
an abundance of myrmidons whose sole mer- 
chandise is any deed for any fee, with protection 
by those who are above the law. 

Cervantes had to create an insane person to 
say the things he felt: and, but for that, Don 
Quixote is a mere record of ravings. Shakespeare 
rails at conditions by proxy. Our diarist calls 
things by their names, in the press, on the plat- 
form, in court and out: and many now live who 
remember him facing a forum of unlimited juris- 
diction in response to the unfair challenge and 
recite crime after crime of which the challenging 
judiciary was guilty. We see him raise the 
orphans of his friend to success. We see him 
drive out of town prominent preachers whose 
congregations are too immersed in material in- 
terests to use their own eyes. We see him 
write up an interview with a senator, who, con- 
fronted with the story, throws up his hands in 
guilt and accepts his "suspension to the end of 
his term." If the medicine man serves humanity 
when he prescribes a pill and charges a fee — 
to what extent, then, helps one who cures whole 
communities of political and judicial cancers and 
strengthens the laws that make for human rights, 
without a fee! 



PREFACE 5 

And the moral is that gentlemen on the public 
pay-roll, who are ornamental and ambitious, 
forsooth, but dishonest, as shown, should not 
be imitated by descendants of good women; but 
excellent men on the other hand, should be re- 
tained so long as they are able and willing to 
serve: for these are lessons in what people en- 
trusted with government, — lawyers, judges, — 
ought not to be. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

Publisher's Preface 3 

Prologue 8 

I. The One behind it 11 

II. Divorce Practice 17 

III. Criminal Immunity 23 

IV. Those Knights 29 

V. That Barber Shop Incident 37 

VI. General Corruption 45 

VII. The Justice-shop 54 

VIII. The Rhoades Case 60 

IX. The Cattle of Chicago Lawn 73 

X. The Testimony 81 

XI. The Chancery Crook 90 

XII. A Skunk of a Namesake 100 

XIII. The Official Lie 106 

XIV. That Edition of Filth 114 

XV. Rascals at Law 123 

Epilogue 129 



PROLOGUE 

''But soft! methinks I digress too much, 
Citing my worthless praise: 0, pardon me; 
For when no friends are by, men praise 
themselves," 

— Shakespeaee. 



THE BRIEF 



I 

TEE ONE BEHIND IT 

I WAS struggling with languages, drifting 
into newspaper work, reading law, prac- 
ticing stenography and economy, and residing 
in Pennsylvania in my early twenties, with not 
even a distant relative within four thousand 
miles except — Mary. Among other things not 
usually committed by men of such age, and 
under such circumstances — I gradually loaned 
my funds to her father. My generosity to the 
family was, judging by the experience I have 
since acquired, quite beyond that of those 
better advised and possessed of much larger 
means. This, coupled with my ready compli- 
ance with requests for the loans of my savings 
without evidences of debt, misled them to 
thinking that I was quite rich. My funds were al- 
ready practically gone and I was entirely depen- 
dent upon what I earned when I learned of the 
exalted suspicions entertained by those who be- 
came my relatives-in-law of the enormous wealths 
I did not possess, and I enlightened the little 
bride, who in turn explained to her people — that 
I simply earned my living and way by work. 



12 THE BRIEF 

Soon my bride began to beg me to leave 
Pittsburg and go farther West — any place, 
saying that she would follow me as soon as I 
would telegraph her to come. After a few days' 
discussion we agreed on Cleveland, where I 
soon found employment, made arrangements for 
her entertainment, and telegraphed for her. 
She wrote several affectionate letters, and at 
last that she was coming. But she did not come. 
She ceased writing. She refused to talk over 
long distance telephone with me. In fact, and 
in law — and to be brief — she deserted me. 
My disappointment was terrible. 

A week had passed. Cleveland was dark to 
me now, and I went to Chicago. But I was — 
infatuated, and sometimes furious, and indeed 
almost raving. For here I was, not only de- 
prived of her and of all my earthly possessions — 
yes, my lifetime's savings — but such a mis- 
placement of everything that seemed worth 
anything in the life of one of that age. And to 
think that when she accompanied me to the train 
as I was leaving Pittsburg — after I had given 
her everything else I possessed, including my 
storage receipts for trunks and other personal- 
ties, except some twenty-odd dollars after my 
fare was paid — her last words of affectionate 
farewell consisted of the suggestion in manner 
childish that I leave with her my watch and 
chain and ring and some diamond heirlooms I 
had, and a "stud" that I had been just young 
and vain enough to buy some time before for 
some three hundred and fifty dollars, lest among 



THE ONE BEHIND IT 13 

strangers I lose them! I left them. So that 
now, when I left Cleveland for Chicago, I was 
just able to secure transportation by purchasing 
a "scalper's" reduced rate ticket, arriving at 
my destination with two suitcases and forty 
cents and practically nothing to borrow on. 
The little wife was to ship everything when she 
was to follow to Cleveland. 

I was in Chicago, alone. My wife returned 
what letters I now addressed to her, some opened 
and some unopened. Some were readdressed by 
herself and some in her father's writing. Anon 
her father sent a female named Newburgh to fol- 
low me to Chicago, where Father-in-law Delahun 
prearranged for counsel and entertainment con- 
sistent with the scheme — to sue me, charging 
that she was with child and that I was the father. 
This wench, as later evidences disclosed, had been 
a concubine of Delahun's and an inmate of a 
common bawdy house. That Delahun gave her 
the fare, furnished her counsel, and prearranged 
everything, she admitted quite boldly in court, as 
also that she obtained my address from him; and 
that she had been given letters I had written to 
Mary : for I did write, foolishly, lovingly — 
desperately. Years later I obtained some of 
my Mary's letters addressed to the lawyer of 
this — person, urging him and pleading with 
him to waylay me, cause me to be imprisoned, 
disgraced, discredited, and got rid of in any way 
consistent with such law practice as was in his 
power. 

The Court instructed the jury that, it being 



14 THE BRIEF 

a civil case, they need not be satisfied beyond a 
reasonable doubt, and that the presumption is 
that the woman knows best who is the father 
of her — brat. There was no child in evidence. 
I had witnesses in court to prove the plot, for 
the woman, in an orgy, confided her criminal 
mission a few nights after her arrival in Chicago 
to those with whom she caroused. One of these 
witnesses was a sick woman who was told that 
she was going to die, and her priest told her 
that she must find me and tell. 

Her deposition was taken by agreement of coun- 
sel and consent of Holdom, the judge, and when it 
was about to be read to the jury the plaintiff's 
counsel objected and the judge sustained him; 
he also objected to my other witnesses. A man 
named Brunski, to whom the woman confided 
her mission and the plot, took the stand. The 
judge — Holdom — ordered him off the stand. 
He would not listen to him. It was a farce! 
In the court room it was bastardy week, one of 
those sessions in which hundreds of such are 
tried, and generally judgments entered against 
the men for payments of alimony. Np doubt 
there are many unfortunate just causes. All 
objections made against my interests were 
sustained quite yawningly and mechanically. 
It was a one-sided affair; a lot of witnesses 
on my side, a good defense, and no show in 
court! My lawyer, Mr. Albert H. Putney, 
was one of my professors in law school, who 
had never before appeared in such a case, 
and only took up the defense on account of 



TEE ONE BEHIND IT 15 

his strong belief in my innocence and in the 
injustice being done me, and would not accept 
any fee. This gentleman took a friendly interest 
and wanted to help. It was impossible. No 
one could understand anything of this sort 
except one who practiced law in Chicago and 
actually knew these things! Chicago always 
was corrupt. I did try to make her a little 
more moral later, but she would not stand for 
it. Mr. Putney, my said lawyer, at this writ- 
ing is chief of the Near-Eastern Division of 
the State Department, Washington. 

A politician named Fake assisted this woman's 
lawyer in prosecuting. He was an "assistant 
state's attorney." He knew her relations with 
Delahun. The custom was to bring a ste- 
nographer to court, for otherwise the evidence 
would not be in existence and a disappointed 
litigant could not appeal. Fake put a "dummy" 
in the reporter's chair in order to mislead us to 
believe that the proceedings were being reported. 
Behold, now: this man was acting — or rather 
cheating — in the name of the State of Illinois ! 
He ordered this dummy in formal language, 
quite conspicuously, "to be sure and make a 
verbatim report." When I wanted to appeal 
I found there was no record to take to the court 
above. This fraud was committed in order to 
prevent me from taking the reporter's chair, 
where I would have made a shorthand report 
had we not been so — deceived in the name of 
the State of Illinois! 

In the earlier stage of this case two lawyers 



16 THE BRIEF 

were hired by Mr. Delahun, one named McCaslin 
and another named Blocki. When Mr. McCashn 
became satisfied that the case was unjust, he 
withdrew from it and tried to get his associate 
to drop it. But Blocki stuck, although he knew 
it was a fake case. Then Blocki's wife tried to 
get him to drop that kind of law practice, but 
she could not lead him aright either, and she 
left him; then Blocki gave to the papers a story 
to the effect that she left with another man. 
Then, of course, she decided never to return to 
him. Thus ended another married relation — 
but that is another story. 

Later Mr. McCaslin left Chicago, and is now a 
judge somewhere in Massachusetts. 



II 

DIVORCE PRACTICE 

ANON I learned that Mary sued for divorce 
in Pittsburg. The formahties of the laws 
of Pennsylvania were carefully complied with. 
She was sworn to a document reading that I 
deserted her; that I was already married to a 
lady named Starke; that my marriage to her 
was an act of bigamy — and, further, that she 
was a minor three days under twenty-one years 
at the time she married, and that without pa- 
rental consent — a charge no more true than the 
others, but the insertion of this gravamen en- 
abled her to sue in the name of her father as the 
next friend of an "infant"; that I failed and 
refused to support her; and that she did not 
know where I was. And here I had my letters 
readdressed in her own writing! At the time 
I learned of the suit the case had already reached 
the concluding stage, for a master in chancery 
had made his recommendation to the court 
that a decree be granted her by default, I not 
having known of the suit, not defending. Mary 
had access to my baggage, so she took both 
baggage and papers — and her many letters 
to me, even the one in which she thanked me for 
saving her life when a burning lamp had fallen 
over and covered her with flames. 



18 THE BRIEF 

Then and ever since in these years I often 
wondered why the blunder was made to insert 
that I deserted her "the next day," for those 
charges remain on record, and couples who 
separate the "next day" usually do so for one 
well-known reason; so that it was as clumsy 
a job for her sake as also an earmark of her 
lawyer's and her next friend's crookedness: and 
the poor girl did suffer the consequences. But 
that is another story, too. 

I did not have much money. Yet for all the 
matter of policy in law practice to the contrary, 
I could not stand for the falsehood without 
answering to it; and I did. I was still young 
and foolish enough to believe that being right 
alone will prevail, too. And still, and for all 
the evidences to the contrary before and since, 
I hope for strength so to believe to the end! 
Of course, I was impulsive. The case came to 
my knowledge by my writing to the courts 
asking whether some sort of action was not 
pending. Then I secured a copy of the files, in 
the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, 
Pennsylvania. I prepared an answer to it and 
filed it, together with a petition to the Court, ex- 
plaining that I was never served, that there was a 
danger of fraud and miscarriage of justice, and 
that I wanted leave to defend. I got a lawyer, 
but I did not give him much money — because 
I did not have much. This lawyer readily made 
plans for many suits — his eye was on figures 
following the dollar mark: but his conversation 
did not savor of either speedy action or other 



DIVORCE PRACTICE 19 

satisfaction for me. It was all of figures, aliena- 
tion of affection suits — money. I told him he 
could keep all the damages he could recover, 
but I wanted justice for myself: that is, I did 
not want a lie to be proven on me. I was crazy 
about the girl, too. The lawyer wanted in writ- 
ing that he could keep all the damages he could 
recover. He got it. A cousin of this lawyer's 
was a railroad-witness physician, who was in 
a position to get passes for his friends. He got 
one for this lawyer for a set of vacation trips all 
over the country: and when he got the pass my 
true and lawful attorney also took in Pittsburg. 
The first thing he did was go and see the 
Delahuns, and offer that whilst he had come to 
fight — if Mr. Delahun would give him some of. 
those diamonds of mine he would let him take 
his daughter's decree of divorce by default, by 
silent agreement, or in any other way, on 
the charges on file. Soon I heard of that, for 
Delahun now had something to brag about, to 
strengthen his position, and it was common 
talk in Pittsburg. When Lawyer Ogden returned 
to Chicago I accused him of it, giving him the 
source of my information. He did not deny it, 
but said that he made that proposition to test 
the Delahuns — in fun. Maybe so, but I dis- 
missed him immediately. Soon thereafter the 
court in Pittsburg entered an order, on motion, 
to ignore my petition for leave to defend because 
it was not accompanied by a non-resident's bond. 
Lawyers, like other people, usually give but 
slight attention to one who has little or no money. 



20 THE BRIEF 

Of course there are exceptions, but I did, not 
meet the exceptions. I had a great grievance 
and a just cause, and was eager to fight a fair 
fight. One is never such a champion of Justice 
as when he wants some. But justice works on 
wheels, as it were, and the wheels have to be 
greased, and I did not have much of the grease. 
The country herself has since, as before, officially 
admitted that you must have men, munition, and 
money. You can buy both men and munition, 
with money. I soon learned, too, that under the 
Pennsylvania practice, when a woman files a 
petition for divorce, and her defendant or victim, 
as the case may be, is within the jurisdiction of 
the court, her lawyer makes motion for tempo- 
rary alimony, attorney's fees, and master in 
chancery's costs. She invariably gets this by 
interlocutory order; which means that I would 
have had to pay and keep on paying or go to 
jail: and poverty is no defense. When a very 
young man marries and gives up his funds to a 
father-in-law he does not think of a sinking fund 
for such purposes: so I was not prepared. The 
dice were loaded, the fight was an impossibility. 
I had not even had time enough to recover from 
my series of shocks yet, without remaking money. 
Besides, I knew I could not refrain from violence 
if I ever met that scoundrel anywhere — and 
then the law would handle me even more roughly. 
There was no use, then, and it would have been 
too expensive and risky, to go to Pittsburg: so 
I just decided to console myself with the satis- 
faction that I filed an answer, feeling that 



DIVORCE PRACTICE 21 

though it did no further good, it called the lie 
a lie, on the record. For purposes of policy, 
again, had I not filed the answer at all it would 
have been better, unless I had fought to the 
end. I had not the means. Nor did I care any- 
thing about policy. Policy is sometimes trickery. 
I wanted Truth. I knew I was right. The 
charges were false. I learned about them, and, 
like I thought an honest man ought to do, de- 
nied them. There have been times when I did feel 
that Mary was made to believe falsehoods, and 
I was fond of her. I should have known better. 
I was more of heart and less of head. Per- 
haps I should have been glad to get rid of her 
had I had the information I since obtained: 
but even then not with such charges against me 
on the records of a court, if I could help it. And 
in spite of it all, I could not believe her capable 
of any wrong, at times. I have since known 
men much older who could not believe any 
wrong, when there was wrong! There is no 
permanent resolution about her now. No deci- 
sion of her morals or turpitude is twice alike or 
ever final, or ever will be. — In my life Mary 
is a sarcoma that gnaws. 

Other complications arose. I used to be as 
good to my friends as other young people are 
who have no one to warn them. Now, when I 
got married and had all sorts of plans, and by 
such extravagances my means had begun to be 
exhausted, I wrote to those friends whom I 
had accommodated with loans that I could well 
use the various little amounts they had borrowed. 



22 THE BRIEF 

Some responded with what money they could 
spare. They were just friendly loans, without 
interest, and without memoranda, for that 
matter. By the time I got to Chicago responses 
still came to the Pittsburg address, although I 
had notified the postoffice to forward my mail. 



Ill 

CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 

MY mail was received by Mary and her 
people in Pittsburg after I left there. 
They took out the moneys and checks the letters 
contained, signed my name, appropriated the 
funds, and destroyed the letters. When I 
learned about this I resented it and wrote 
demanding my stolen property. My letters to 
them were still ignored. Soon I learned that 
some of the inclosures were post-office money 
orders, one of which came in a registered letter. 
I complained about that to the post-office de- 
partment. After a few months' correspondence 
I was informed by Post-office Inspectors Stuart, 
Germer and Mullen of Chicago that Delahun 
had political influence, that they could not get 
any satisfaction out of the postal authorities in 
Pittsburg, that they are a lot of crooks, and 
that they were very sorry about it. I had the 
return receipt of a registered letter in which a 
postal money order had been delivered to the 
Delahuns, who signed my name. The post- 
master-general referred my letter to the local 
inspectors in Pittsburg, and they, as I was now 
informed, could not help me because there was 
politics! Then I wrote to President McKinley. 
By order of the President an investigation was 
made and the amount of this money order was 



24 THE BRIEF 

repaid me by the postoffice. But I wanted to 
know what would be done to the thieves. After 
much correspondence I learned that nothing 
was done to them, and that the money which I 
received from the Department was deducted 
from the wages of the letter carrier from whom 
the registered letter was obtained without my 
authority, in spite of my written request to 
forward my mail. I sent the postman my check 
for the amount. But against pilferers of the 
mail who had friends in politics even the Pres- 
ident was helpless. Later on letters were sent 
to me by friends in New York, together with 
the envelopes in which they had been received 
unsealed, written by this Delahun, on his real- 
estate-agent stationery, saying that I was a 
very bad man, that nice people ought to shun 
me, that he did this letter-writing unselfishly 
and for the sake of humanity, that I was — 
everything that one could be called by a vile 
and filthy-mouthed rascal such as he. Again I 
lodged a grievance at the postoffice, because it 
is a violation of the postal laws to send such 
abuse: but I got no better satisfaction than 
when my money -mail was pilfered. "Nothing 
doing," "Politicians," "Great big drag in 
Pittsburg," were the reasons assigned by the 
same post-ofiice "inspectors" for what they 
pleaded to be their inability to do their duties 
under the law, claiming to have corresponded 
with the authorities in Washington and Pitts- 
burg for months, in vain. 

I would have been something else than hu- 



CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 25 

man had I not expressed my sentiments to the 
Delahun family in writing, which was really 
all I could afford to do. I did that and sent 
it by mail. Nor could I admit that the law 
gives them rights which other citizens have not. 
There is a quaint epithet, known by all Anglo- 
Saxons, commonly used and properly applied to 
men like I thought Delahun was, and so I showed 
him, in argumentative manner, that if ever there 
was a son of an indecent woman, he exhibited 
every etiological element of each symptom that 
pronounced one. He consulted his political and 
legal friends with a view of getting me prose- 
cuted for it: but they told him that, had I 
written those letters to third persons instead of 
to himself, talking about him in terms as I did 
to him, those letters would be actionable: or, 
had I written those things on postal cards in- 
stead of letters, the language would be actionable 
under the postal laws: but that those letters, ad- 
dressed as they were to himself, did not amount 
to a publication of the names that I gave him 
until he showed them around himself, and 
for such publication, by himself, the sender of 
the letter could not be charged. Delahun was 
furious: but he saw a way out: so he seated 
himself, now that he was well advised of the law, 
and wrote postal cards to himself and his wife 
and his daughter and other relatives of his that 
I never heard of, calling each all sorts of names, 
signed my name, and had them mailed to him- 
self and his relatives and friends by his female 
accessory from Chicago. 



26 THE BRIEF 

Then I was charged by these same post-ofBce 
inspectors who theretofore claimed to resent 
Delahun's corrupt political influence — with send- 
ing obscene postal cards to the Delahun gang. 
I have begun to submit to such conditions in 
Pittsburg as criminal immunities by influence. 
Perhaps I might have been willing to overlook 
that this individual had the right to rob me, to 
lie about me, and to write all the libels he desired 
about me, in manner he chose, with impunity, 
whilst I should not have the same right, — 
since the President himself was helpless in the 
matter, — but here I was, charged with the 
writing of post-cards to Delahun, which cards 
he himself had written to himself and his! 

Two years had passed. The judgment in 
the paternity case had been paid and forever 
satisfied^ and the wench had long since gone 
back to Pittsburg, the bawdy house, and Dela- 
hun. The white-slave law did not exist then; 
nor would it have affected one who had im- 
munity by influence. There are plenty such. 
My petition for divorce was now pending in the 
Cook County Circuit Court, in Chicago. For 
I had to get rid of Mary legally. In fact it had 
been so pending at the time I heard that she 
had sought a divorce in Pittsburg upon those 
charges in which her father and his divorce 
specialist friends had assisted her. I charged 
desertion, although I had other evidence: for 
what would have been the use of marring her 
future chances.^ Had she not done enough to 
herself alone .^^ All I wanted was that she either 



CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 27 

come, and get out of the sinister influences in 
which I beheved she Kved — for I did beheve 
her an angel fallen among thieves, at times — or 
that I get free from the legal and moral bonds. 
The postal-card case came up for trial in the 
United States Court. I was arraigned on my 
twenty-fourth birthday. The very same post- 
office inspectors who pretended to sympathize 
with me because they could not be helpful when 
the money was stolen from the mail — these 
same officials who lamented that nothing could 
be done to that scoundrel because he had friends 
in Pittsburg politics — now appeared as my 
prosecutors. Nay, they lied in the hope of 
having me convicted, in order to please the 
Delahuns. They sought the friendship of the 
man who had friends in politics; for they were 
on the public pay-roll through the support of 
such. They swore one after the other that I 
went to them and told them that I had written 
those postal cards. They knew they were in 
Delahun's writing: and they were still in posses- 
sion of the letters he had written to my friends in 
New York, for which these same barnacles of 
the law should have prosecuted him. Delahun 
confirmed their testimony by saying that he 
had seen me write a hundred times, and 
that they were written by me. My plea was 
that Delahun himself had written them in order 
to get me in trouble. I wanted to offer in evi- 
dence the letters he had written about me, but 
the post-office inspectors had them: they claimed 
they were in Washington. I doubted it then, and 



28 THE BRIEF 

know now that they were not in Washington. 
Inspector Stuart had them in his pocket. I 
happened to have other papers written in Dela- 
hun's hand, and used them to the best ad- 
vantage I could. 



IV 

THOSE KNIGHTS 

DELAHUN came with political letters to 
Prosecutor Bethea: also, he wore the same 
society badges that the prosecutor did; and he 
had shed tears before the United States Attor- 
ney in his office. I have no doubt Bethea be- 
lieved him. The prosecutor overdid himself, and 
got a number of assistants to help him. They 
abused me till they talked themselves hoarse, 
one after the other. I was alone. Since then 
I learned that when Delahun asked the United 
States Attorney to help him, he added: "Be- 
hold my badge as a noble Knight. You swore 
to avenge the wrongs done a brother. I 
am your brother. This man wronged me and 
my beautiful, innocent daughter." Bethea was 
a bachelor. These cattle actually believe them- 
selves nobles after they pay their initiation! 

I have been more or less connected since then 
with some of the biggest cases tried in the coun- 
try, but never have I seen so much energy dis- 
played, so much abusive language vituperated, 
and so much unfair and unlawful law practice 
in evidence as these United States Attorneys 
indulged, in this petty, nasty, "clothes-line" 
family affair, upon such forged postal cards, and 
against me — a mere boy, with not a friend 



so THE BRIEF 

within four thousand miles! The prosecutor 
put the Government to considerable expense: 
even caused the payment of the traveling ex- 
penses of the Delahun family and some ward 
political toughs that they brought with them. 
This great power, the counsel for the Govern- 
ment, indulged in the unprofessional practice of 
waving a copy of that fraudulently secured 
"paternity" judgment before the jury, and by 
flaunting before the venire a certified copy of 
a now fraudulently and by -default-obtained di- 
vorce of Pittsburg, which said that I had had a 
wife living when I married this man's daughter. 
They made reference to my youth, my education, 
my religion, my writing in the papers, my for- 
eign accent, which they claimed to be feigned — 
for I had spent seventeen of the few years I 
lived, abroad — and referred to my familiarity 
with foreign languages, as so many instruments 
of crime or vice, and made capital of every 
possible suggestion that could arouse passion 
and prejudice — for nothing will provoke the 
prejudice of the lower men in a jury box more 
than contemptible reference to education or any- 
thing respectable. "Look at him!" he shrieked; 
" don't he look like a seducer of young women .^^ 
He speaks French, and German, and Latin, and 
Hebrew, and Hungarian, and Italian, and Greek, 
and what not! — Will you let a fellow like that 
be at large and make it possible for him to 
write insulting postals to you and your wives 
and your daughters.^ He has a lot of wives, 
too. He deserted his young wife: and look 



THOSE KNIGHTS 31 

at this good, suffering father-in-law!" — whilst 
the complaint against me was that I wrote a 
postal to Mr. Delahun, respectfully requesting 
that he return to me the things he stole from 
me. The law is that though a man be a thief, 
you may not call him that on postals. You 
may, in a closed letter. Delahun wrote it, and 
signed my name. When Bethea got through 
abusing me, his assistant, Childs, addressed the 
jury; and after him another assistant, Hopkins, a 
senator's son who was there to work his way into 
politics: all in the same vicious vein. When the 
assistants got through they asked Delahun how 
he liked them as orators! Bethea foamed like 
a hy drophobiac : he said that the writing was 
so far from being Delahun's and so near mine, 
that as a matter of fact I imitated Delahun's 
writing when I wrote to him, and so prepared a 
defense, in order to be able to deny the writing 
if ever I were prosecuted for it. He was so 
tricky and abusive, and so unfair to fact, that I 
could not refrain from calling him a liar and a 
scoundrel in open court: for he well knew that 
I worked in newspaper offices, which are full of 
typewriters; he knew I was a shorthand reporter, 
and had typewriters; and he knew that if I had 
wanted to write something that I ever expected 
to deny, it would have been more reasonable for 
me to write it on a machine. And why should I, 
if I had written them? For I was anxious to 
have it known in what dastardly manner the 
cur robbed me, and how he made his young 
daughter take the place of billy, black-jack, and 



32 TEE BRIEF 

other burglar's tools! As a piece of thievery, 
it was a clever job: but is that the use one 
should make of a daughter? The pig! 

It was one of those trials in which the prose- 
cution feels overconfident: a prosecuting attorney 
has nothing to lose anyway, for, right or wrong, 
the Government pays the expenses and politics 
stand behind him: and what more dangerous 
than an irresponsible person — or a fool armed 
with a knife — with nothing to lose, acting in 
the name of the country? It was generally 
understood at the time, too, that when one is 
accused in the United States Courts he might as 
well plead guilty, for the marshal, the jurors, the 
commissioners, and all concerned there are one 
crowd, interdependent on each other for favors 
and the maintenance of jobs; they are known to 
stick together like thieves. The juries there con- 
sist of a melange of poor citizens and pensioners 
and cheap politicians. A rather interesting coin- 
cidence in a barber shop disclosed later that at 
least one actually came from the soldiers' home. 
These poor fellows usually beg the prosecutor for 
the favor of being given a chance to make jury- 
money. The trial lasted two days. Over night 
the jurors were not allowed to go home. The 
deputy marshal in charge explained to them that 
the prosecution would have allowed them to go 
home, but that I, the defendant, insisted that 
they be kept behind lock and key — as if they 
had not already been influenced enough by all 
that array of official perjury and insidious elo- 
cution. Had I been fined, I do not know where 



THOSE KNIGHTS 33 

I would have got the money to pay. The jury 
found against me. 

Judge Kohlsaat could not help seeing through 
it: he would not impose any fine. He said he 
did not believe I wrote those postals: he said 
there were too many words misspelled. He held 
that I was a perfect speller. The same words 
were misspelled in the letters of Delahun which 
I offered for comparison. Many lawyers who 
were present told me that they never saw the 
judge so lenient with a man against whom the 
jury had found; that a man would have to be 
crazy not to see that the prosecution was too 
vicious to be honest; and that the Government 
never before had spent so much money to make a 
breach between husband and wife so perfect and 
permanent. That is all it seemed to amount to. 
And the judge concluded by saying that instead 
of a United States District Court a divorce 
court should have had to listen to that case. 
United States Attorney Bethea was furious with 
disappointment. When next he saw me he 
accused me of having had friends influence the 
judge. I told him that he lied and invited him 
to go and let us ask the judge. I did not care 
how I spoke to him now, for he had already done 
his worst. But he would not go to the judge 
with me. 

While this postal-card case was being tried, 
frequent reference was made, for the purpose of 
"showing me up," to the fact that there had 
been a divorce against me in Pittsburg. I 
explained that that was a fraudulent divorce, of 



34 TEE BRIEF 

no validity; that my divorce was then pending 
and was due to be heard in a few days; and 
that I had mailed notice of it to the defend- 
ant, the daughter of the scoundrel present. I 
showed the large envelope, unopened, still con- 
taining the copy of the petition for divorce, 
which Mary had readdressed to me, having 
refused to accept it. The judge looked at it, as 
I thought then, indifferently. Under our law, 
when a person is charged with one offense, no 
evidence is admissible which would tend to 
prejudice him before the jury, except to the issue, 
and the issue in this case was whether I wrote 
the postals or not: but when you want a jury to 
find that one wrote certain postals and at the 
same time show that that same defendant has 
lost other law suits — it is a violation of law 
that no decent lawyer would commit. The 
United States Attorneys did that. And Dela- 
hun's lawyer in Pittsburg who engineered all 
this smut was the president of the bar associa- 
tion there! Some of the crookedest tricks I 
ever saw were accomplished by people cloaked 
in just such ofiices! Yes, a dishonest lawyer is 
the crookedest of all crooks, and there are thou- 
sands of them, of very high standing — as such. 
Some are never found out, because their crooked- 
ness is for the rich, whose actions poor wretched 
political parasites in office would not dare in- 
vestigate, except by orders from men above, as a 
political investment. 

The petition for divorce which I filed was one 
of those printed blanks, with spaces to fill in. 



THOSE KNIGHTS 35 

Under the laws of Illinois I was entitled to a 
divorce when two years had elapsed from the 
day Mary deserted or refused to follow. More 
than two years had elapsed. The printed stat- 
utory form read that petitioner and defendant 
were married and "lived and cohabited" together 
before the desertion was committed. Whether 
there was living and cohabitation really or not 
did not make any difference for the purposes of 
the case; because if she deserted more than two 
years ago, that was sufficient to entitle one to 
the decree. But the words "lived and cohabited" 
bothered me, for I really did not live and 
cohabit with her, and now was rather glad of it; 
so at the trial I explained to the judge that 
although those words appeared in the printed 
form, that part was not true: I was glad to em- 
phasize it; and, too, I wanted to have the facts 
clear upon the record. The judge saw a plain 
case, — a lot of returned letters in the defendant's 
own writing, evidences that she and her people 
accepted my moneyed mail, evidence that I had 
sent for her, that I resided in Chicago for two 
years and more — and I had a witness there to 
prove the breach of the Commandment; but I 
told the judge, when my evidence on desertion 
was all in, that if he thought I made out a case 
I would rather not call that additional witness. 
It sounded well to Judge Tuthill, and he knew 
me, too, because whilst struggling to make ends 
meet as a reporter I had time for sundry chari- 
ties, with some of which he was connected. 
For instance, I was a probation and juvenile 



36 THE BRIEF 

officer and did not draw any pay, and he was the 
judge of that court. (This is the same judge 
who, some thirteen years later, decided judi- 
cially, in a case where that was not in issue, that 
Shakespeare was a mere sausage-maker and that 
the works bearing his name were written by 
Bacon the courtier, shyster, and confessed, con- 
victed, and pardoned bribe-taker and contempo- 
rary, who himself never claimed to have done the 
work. I want to plead for Mr. Tuthill that in 
my time he used to be quite rational and that a 
mere lapse of senility may be to blame for the 
slander to the three-hundred-year-dead Shake- 
speare. One need not be dead at all to be suc- 
cessfully maligned on the grand-stand as even 
this story will show.) 

The files of my cause disclosed that Mary 
refused to accept the notice of suit which the 
clerk mailed to Pittsburg, for it came back to the 
Court. My heart was so heavy at that short 
trial! How unsophisticated I was about her 
would be better indicated by the fact that in 
spite of all this persecution, and years after I 
had divorced her, I named her as beneficiary in 
my life insurance. Anyway, I got the divorce. 



V 

TEAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 

THE juror from the soldiers' home must not 
be overlooked, so I quote this from my 
diary : 

... I went to the Saratoga Hotel barber 
shop for a hair cut. I very seldom can spare 
the time I have to wait for my "next"; 
therefore I shave myself, but I never could 
learn to cut my hair. 

Barbers are quite a loquacious fraternity. 
Half the time some of them blabber aimlessly; 
sometimes they impart good information, 
such as they pick up from customers, by 
overhearing them while they talk with each 
other, and all the time they talk for talk's 
sake. 

I was waiting for my turn, reading the 
Osservatore Romano, when my attention was 
attracted by a part of a barber's talk, while 
he was shaving a disinterested victim. The 
name of the barber was Aryan: 

"This lottery shark, John H. Dalton, I 
see in the papers, was again convicted for 
using the mails fraudulently. My father 
helped convict him twicet. You know, 
Dalton sometimes calls himself a doctor. 
My gov'nor is on the Federal jury almost 



38 THE BRIEF 

every year; they always have the same crowd 
of jurors there. When they have an intelh- 
gent and impartial crowd they just hold on 
to them, and they just keep on drafting them 
in, again and again." 

I knew Dalton; that is how my atten- 
tion was attracted at the mention of his 
name. 

When I first came to Chicago, Dalton called 
at my office and gave me a lot of translation 
to do; but after translating a few of his 
pamphlets I became suspicious as to the legiti- 
macy of his business, and then I declined 
to do further work for him: for which 
reason Mr. Dalton refused to pay me for the 
work I had done in the past. And so, as I 
was in the habit of going through my ac- 
counts at least once a month, I have seen the 
name so often that its mention naturally 
invited my curiosity. I listened further: 

"Who the devil is Dalton .^^ Gee, but that 
damn razor of yours is dull; it hurts like 
hell. I thought your old man was in the 
soldiers' home in Danville: do they draft 
jurors from there .^" 

"Hell, no! They serve the papers on me, 
and I get him. He can use the few dollars, 
you know. Of course he always gives my 
address. Last time he was on the jury he 
said he was the barber in the Saratoga Hotel. 
Of course he could not say he was in the 
Home." 

The barber stopped for breath and to strop 



THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 39 

the razor, which he then tested on his thumb- 
nail, and continued: 

"Dalton is a poHtician. He owns a lot of 
saloons. He is what they call the lottery king. 
He runs the International Aural Clinic, 
which is a fake mail order concern, but 
from, its name people naturally think it is 
a hospital : there he sells a sort of an ear drum 
and a small bottle of vaseline, a combination 
which costs him about three cents, at fabu- 
lous prices, guaranteeing them to cure deaf- 
ness; he advertises Dr. Dalton's Deafness 
Cure all over the world, in all the languages, 
and thousands of dollars are pouring into his 
thief's kitchen every day; he makes money 
hand over fist, and they can't do nothing to 
him." 

"But you say he has been convicted," 
put in the groaning customer from under the 
squeaky swishes of the razor and amid the 
incessant talk of the barber, edgewise. 

"What t'ell is a few thousand dollars' fine 
to a guy like that. It ain't nothing to him. 
He has been convicted many times; but he 
just pays a few thousand dollars' fine, laughs, 
walks out of the court room, goes to one of 
his saloons, sets them up, and that is all it 
amounts to, to him. But say, the greatest 
case my gov'nor ever was in was before 
Kohlsaat. It was a young fellow, about 
twenty-four years old. Say, that fellow knew 
all kinds of languages. Wasn't he smart, 
though.? He used to write in the papers. 



40 THE BRIEF 

roasted every one he didn't like, and he 
wasn't afraid of law nor nothing. He would 
marry any girl he liked. It was a cinch for 
him, for he had all kinds of money. They 
said he was some damn nobleman who got 
piles of money from the old country — that's 
what the bailiff said to one of the gentlemen 
of the jury. Well, he would shake his wife 
and get another one. He wouldn't go to the 
trouble of getting no divorce nor nothing. 
Sometimes he would live with a woman with- 
out any marriage; when he would get tired 
of her he would just shake her. That fellow 
was so smart they couldn't do nothing to 
him. 

"There he sat in court. Gee, he was 
dressed fine, and he was a dandy looker, too. 
The first glimpse my old man took of him, 
he says to himself, says he, 'wouldn't you 
look dandy in stripes .f^' Well, sir, he was 
charged with calling his father-in-law a 
scoundrel on a postal card. His father-in- 
law did him some dirt; I guess he was an 
old profligate, all right; and I think he 
turned his daughter away from this damn 
foreign husband of hers, for, you see, she 
only married him for his money, and she got 
all of that. But it is unconstitutional to send 
such insulting postal cards by the mail. 

"Well, sir, there he spread himself com- 
fortable on a table in the court, dressed like 
a new doll, writing letters and drawing pic- 
tures of the jurors, the judge, and the prose- 



THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 41 

cutor, and he didn't give a damn. And then 
he took the stand and dared deny that he 
wrote the insults, after a Government de- 
tective himself swore that he was guilty as 
hell. He didn't care for nobody. And there 
was some law professor who said the writings 
was not his; and also an old woman, from 
uptown, you know, and she testified for him. 
She liked him, and she had daughters; and 
the prosecutor said it right to her face, right 
there in court, and before the judge and the 
jury, that that is why she swore the writing 
wasn't his — because she had daughters; and 
she didn't do a thing but smile. She said he 
was the finest gentleman she ever knowed. 

"I wish I had had a chance to get a whack 
at him, I tell you. Gee, wouldn't I! 

"He was fine educated, too. His lawyer, 
a little Dutch shyster, said something there 
about that the father-in-law, whose name 
was Delahun, had wrote worse about him 
to some New York Mason lodge; but they 
could not prove it; and then he said that 
Colonel — what the hell is his name — well, 
whatever it is, he said that the post-oflSce 
inspector had stole his evidence. He ad- 
mitted that what was writ on the postal — 
I think there was several of them postals — 
was all true, and he would not take it back; 
and he said he wrote something like them, 
and worse, in letters, but not on postals. 
The court stopped him from insinuating 
further that the post-oflfice inspector was a 



42 THE BRIEF 

thief, because that wasn't competent evidence 
nohow. 

"Then he got mad, and told the United 
States District Attorney that he was a har 
and a scoundrel; and then he said the old 
father-in-law was a liar — I believe he called 
him an idiot, and then he called him a 
cancer-eaten rogue. What do you think of 
that — right in open court ! 

"Why, that fellow, he's got children, so 
many of them that he don't know them; 
some of them he never seen, but they're his, 
all right. He was certainly hell. And, you 
know, two of the jurors was Masons, and 
they said that this fellow wasn't a Mason 
at all, because if he was one, in a trouble 
like that, wouldn't he have sense enough to 
give the distress signal of the fraternity in 
open court, so that his brothers could recog- 
nize it.^ You know the district court is always 
jammed with folks and lawyers, and don't 
you think if he was a Mason he would have 
sense enough to know that there was Masons 
amongst the crowd, and put on a Mason 
badge as big as a fork, so they would see it 
and help him. You are a member of the Mac- 
cabees yourself: If you was on the jury, 
and a fellow insinuated that he was a brother 
Maccabee, and he wasn't, wouldn't you con- 
vict him on general principles.'^ And wouldn't 
you have it in for him? 

"Gee, but he was a bad egg. They showed 
the damn foreigner up, all right; and, you 



THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 43 

know, he was afraid of the jurors' finding 
out some more about him privately, so he 
made the judge keep them prisoners over 
night. It is hard to escape a Federal jury 
anyway; but they found him guilty all right." 

"And what did they do to him.^" slob- 
bered the customer from under the bay rum. 

"Well, that's up to the judge. The jury 
had nothing to do with the sentence, only 
to find him guilty. I don't know just what 
he got. I hope to Christ they hung him. — 
Next!" 

I was next. Barber Aryan cut my hair. 
He talked a great deal to me; he told me all 
about the horse races and the baseball games 
and the prize fights. I would have given 
anything to have had him revert to the case 
of which he had spoken to my predecessor 
in the chair of torture, but I could not think 
of a thing that would lead to it, as I was a 
stranger to him. I was too conscious, too, 
of my position in the matter, and I did not 
have the courage to broach it. 

Some weeks later I looked for the same 
barber again. By now he had lost his job; 
but I learned that he worked in the Great 
Western Hotel. I managed to get into his 
chair, and to remind him that I once over- 
heard him talk about an interesting case, 
in which his father served as juror. He did 
not seem to be in good humor, his breath 
was spirited, and his answer short: "I know 
all about the case, sir," he said, "but you 



44 THE BRIEF 

can't make me talk about it; you are a 
newspaperman, I know, and you would write 
the thing up." 

"No, sir," he resumed after a period of 
silent hair clipping, "I am as mum as an oyster 
on that there subject." 

I looked up the records of that postal- 
card case, and my experience in the barber 
shop was fully confirmed. This barber's 
father was actually on my jury and had 
represented himself as a barber in the Sara- 
toga Hotel. I continued my inquiries and 
found that this barber's father — my juror 
— was an inmate of the Old Soldiers' home 
at Danville. 



VI 

GENERAL CORRUPTION 

THINGS practical confronted me in their 
true complexion. I was fledging into ma- 
ture manhood and began to take the atmosphere 
in which I lived most seriously, and crooked- 
ness pervaded so many things ! I lived in Chicago, 
they say the crookedess place on earth: but 
that is not so. The big city is a great hiding 
place, infested with everything, everywhere. But 
I began to see with traveled, expert eyes. High 
and low vice, perjury, and general corruption 
existed not only, but was worshiped by the 
multitude and even by those in office and power 
because of their enormity and success; and it 
was all aggregate and not individual: nay, indi- 
vidual corruption would have failed, even as indi- 
vidual honesty at times, for organized jealousy, 
competition, and corruption would have over- 
taken it under the pretext of fighting for fair- 
ness. If a man held public ofiice, or worked 
for a big concern or a rich man, it appeared 
that he did not feel it necessary to be decent 
at all : and on the witness-stand — it never 
before would have seemed reasonable that people 
would swear so recklessly. Such were my obser- 
vations, for instance, as a reporter in court. 
It all seemed a mere game for — who will win ! 



46 THE BRIEF 

One small band with which I naturally fell in 
was an organization of shorthanders. The high 
courts of Chicago did not have any official ste- 
nographers, although the law authorized every 
judge to appoint one for his room; but as the 
judges' jobs were elective, and judges wanted to 
make plausible showings of economy at future 
elections, some of them did not hurry to take 
advantage of their rights under that law and 
stuck to the status quo, which was more expen- 
sive to the public, less safe, and often corrupt 
— but all that was subconscious. The people 
don't know: and politicians thrive upon that 
ignorance. . The system, such as it was, was un- 
fair to litigants who could not afford reporters, 
partial to those who could, and unreliable gener- 
ally, because stenographers were paid by parties 
to suits, many of whom controlled their stenog- 
raphers and corrected their transcripts — and the 
reporters were not the servants of the court, as 
lawyers, and judges, too, ought to be, but of those 
who hired them. And so the grade of their ability, 
the caliber of counsel who hired them, as well 
as the necessity of the patronage of the respective 
employers, affected the certificates of evidence that 
they signed, and justice. Nor could the fraud 
which was committed upon me in the name of 
the State of Illinois have been possible had the 
court reporting system been fair. And such 
fraud was general, and the public suffered. I 
wrote an article advocating fair competitive 
examinations and appointments under the law, 
which appeared in the Herald of March 22, 



GENERAL CORRUPTION 47 

1903. This antagonized some of my fellow- 
reporter^ very much, or at least divided them 
into friends and enemies. 

Some years before then I had passed a short- 
hand-teachers' examination and received Sir Isaac 
Pitman's certificate. Not that I ever expected 
to teach it, or to practice it, for that matter. 
The local reporters knew that I was the only 
one who had such an evidence of proficiency; 
and they also knew that I had been mentioned 
for an official reporter's job. The first reason 
why I did not get that job was that I did not have 
the $2000 which I was asked to pay for it; and 
the second was that when I was told that my 
note would be accepted, and that I could pay 
it in installments from the earnings as official 
reporter, I wanted to know who would get the 
$2000 — for unless the money went to a legiti- 
mate purpose, I would not have the job. Then 
they said I was unreasonable! 

Now, there were men in the reporting business 
who had grandsons older than I was; these older 
men organized a society under a charter from one 
of the labor orders. They invited me to join 
it, which I did. To my surprise I found later 
that the original organizers all had taken oaths 
not to seek or accept, but to oppose, the appoint- 
ment of official reporters. They heard that I 
declined the offer of one job and was tnentioned 
for another. I believed in both the law and the 
appointment: but since there was no honest way 
of getting it, and since, also, the veterans in the 
business swore that they did not care for it but 



48 , THE BRIEF 

were opposed to it, and since I had other am- 
bitions anyway, I had no special reason to object 
to remaining a member of the miion; for I only 
joined in order not to offend those who invited 
me. 

The organizers of the union themselves wanted 
the official jobs. They framed up the "union" in 
order to get the younger people in and pledge 
them against seeking appointments. When that 
was accomplished the older men went to work, 
by political influence and otherwise, and secretly 
sought the official appointments and secured some 
one by one! In a town so big and so corrupt 
there is always something to find fault with, 
anyway: but this being a subject so near to me, 
and it being of interest to the public, I exposed 
the perfidy, which I resented, in a signed card 
in the Herald of October 11, 1903. The union 
then appointed a committee to write an article 
denying the unfair conduct: but the editor told 
them that unless the denial was signed and sworn 
to it would not be printed. As the committee 
could not swear to falsehoods in writing, in 
view of the fact that all the judges knew that 
they all were applicants, there was no reply 
printed; and the union had to content itself by 
buying certified copies of that fraudulently rail- 
roaded paternity judgment and sending them to 
the different judges of the superior and circuit 
courts, addressed by typewriter in blank envelopes. 
District Attorney Bethea was also enlisted to 
talk to some of the judges — and he told them 
what a bad man I was! 



GENERAL CORRUPTION 49 

The obtaining of the certified copies is of ad- 
ditional interest, since Holdom, the judge, had 
told me that he was satisfied — too late — that 
that was a miscarriage of justice, and that, for 
that reason, he would direct the clerk of the court 
to impound the papers in that case in order to 
keep malicious individuals from using them, as 
he knew they did. Had the judge done that, 
the circulation of those copies would not have 
been possible, then or later. Nay, I reminded 
him in open court a year or two later of what he 
had said and promised, and that copies of the 
thing are being circulated by enemies. His 
answer was that he was so afflicted with rheuma- 
tism that he did not care to be afflicted with — 
me. — That is the sort of judge he was. — I ought 
to be ashamed to admit it: but I actually used 
to pray for these unwashed curs of human form, 
whilst they all but preyed on me! 

Soon after all this mess I took the bar exami- 
nation and was admitted. Here I was, a licentiate 
at law, a nervous wreck from all I had just been 
through, and with only about two hundred 
dollars to my credit. It was not enough to start 
out with: but I was a sort of a newspaperman, 
and a newspaper offered me a job that was in 
the nature of a lawyer's occupation. They made 
a new "department" to which people in need of 
legal advice were invited to write and were 
to await their answers in the columns of the 
paper. I was to get a paltry compensation by 
the inch and column, but I was satisfied. I 
reckoned that with that I could pay part of the 



50 TEE BRIEF 

office expenses. Soon thousands of letters poured 
in, from everywhere, many containing troubles 
that needed immediate attention and advice. 
The scheme of the paper was to get individuals 
to continue to buy the papers until they would 
find their respective answers. But to let them 
wait their turns would have been cruel, for soon 
so much copy accumulated that it would have 
taken my later correspondents months to receive 
answers to their anxious questions. I soon 
found that what little the newspaper paid me was 
hardly enough to pay for the postage to the 
answers I was not even supposed to write; but 
I could not sympathize with the editorial scheme 
of making them wait so long, after I saw through 
it, so I answered such letters as needed early 
attention without delay, by mail. I knew what 
it was to be anxious, for I had waited myself: 
yes, and was still waiting with a vain and impos- 
sible anxiety no one could know! I did not 
begrudge the newspaper the credit, however, 
for in fact I used its stationery and signed myself 
"The Counselor." I enjoyed the job immensely, 
and I learned more by looking up the answers 
to the thousands of problems than a good many 
years' practice would have taught me. Anon I 
found that the editors opened the mail addressed 
to the "Counselor," in quest for sensational 
news. I put a stop to that. 

Had I not done other work, I could not have 
made ends meet. The result was I worked 
all day and late at night, for months, on the 
troubles of these people, with piles of unread 



GENERAL CORRUPTION 51 

letters always ahead of me; and my delight 
in being helpful and buried in an interest — and 
work — kept me as well entertained as busy. 
Many a morning found me at the desk which 
I had not left since the morning before. And 
many a month long have I worked eighteen 
hours and more a day in the years that have 
elapsed between then and now. 

Never before was work so fascinating. Every 
letter disclosed a distinct set of troubles. I 
certainly was qualified to feel and bear with 
people who ^eve in difficulties; and the great 
majority spoke not only of troubles but also 
of poverty. They were better off than I had 
been, however, for they had the "Counselor" 
to write to. As a power for good, I was growing 
and growing: When a poor person got into 
trouble and it was brought to my attention for 
help — - all I had to do was call by telephone and 
the authorities seemed to fall all over themselves 
in their haste to release prisoners, or transfer a 
drunken police officer to a beat farther away from 
his residence so he could not go and give his wife 
a beating every little while, — all protesting the 
honor of serving the Counselor, who worked for 
God and Charity. Whilst I appreciated the favor 
I took the praise with due discount, for I knew 
that the Saviour himself could not have got such 
prompt service from politicians for nothing, 
except because there was a newspaper behind 
him; and well they might be so practical, for a 
malignant misreport read by millions cannot be 
entirely offset by a booklet like this: so poli- 



52 THE BRIEF 

ticians figure that by befriending a newspaper — at 
least it may — not lie about them, perhaps. How 
delightful it was, to be of actual help, to thou- 
sands! Nor was that all the compensation. The 
paper was owned by the worst man in America. 
He had libeled thousands upon thousands. He 
libeled me and got me into all sorts of trouble, 
years ago. Indeed, he was accessory to the 
murder of President McKinley, and to many 
another disaster, by his cartoons, scandals, and 
lies, whereby people have been misinformed and 
"doped" — as that class of newspapermen de- 
light to call their nefarious work — and the 
victims ruined. Now I was his "Counselor." 
I did some good in his name. And, God, how 
I did love that work! 

The justice-shop system was in vogue. Corrupt 
and rotten are not quite expressive of what they 
were, these thieves' kitchens. When I had 
time and an itch for writing, in those writings 
I advocated, among other reforms, their abolition. 
The system I outlined in my articles has been 
realized and is now in operation. I often hear 
and read references to it as an exemplary system, 
but never do I hear my name in connection with 
its accomplishment; yet I wrote and spoke 
and worked and suffered persecution for it. But 
thanks for the success. To tell all I knew about 
it would mean the editing together of all I said 
and wrote about it and more. It would be 
incredible to those who have not lived and prac- 
ticed law — or have not been in the clutches of 
it — in Chicago. My last article on the subject 



GENERAL CORRUPTION 53 

appeared in the Record-Herald on Christmas, 
1904. It was an answer to a card pubHshed by 
a Mr. Darrow, who has since been on trial for 
crime in Cahfornia, defending that system of cor- 
ruption and blackmail in its status quo. He tried 
to rescue his justice-shop friends when the crisis 
of the end of that particular corrupt business 
was reached, for a bill was pending in the Senate 
to do away with the justice-shop and to establish 
the municipal court which I advocated. There 
were some seventy justices and hundreds of 
constables and other judicial parasites contin- 
uously putting up jobs, blackmailing, robbing 
the people, and selling "justice." These men 
made bigger wages than did the judges of the 
courts of record: not officially nor honorably, 
of course — and that is just to what I objected. 
When the matter of their abolition was up they 
put up quite a lobbying fund. Big business 
men, too, contributed large donations, for the 
system was valuable to them. All they had 
to do with accounts was to turn them over, by 
the hundreds, to a "justice," and they were 
all turned into judgments ready for execution, 
on "speculation" fees, without ado. But they 
lost. 



F 



vn 

THE JUSTICE-SHOP 

OR a suggestion of what the justice shop 
was, here is that last article on the subject: 

SCORES JUSTICE-SHOP 



ATTORNEY OF THE CHICAGO BAR POINTS OUT EVILS 
OF THE SYSTEM 

FEES BLAMED FOR ABUSES 

FAVORS THE PLACING OF ALL COURT OFFICIALS ON SALARY 

AS THE REMEDY 

An attorney of considerable prominence 
has recently declared himself the champion 
of the justice court system as it now prevails 
in Chicago, saying, among other things, 
that a change in the system would not change 
conditions in the least; and when he found 
himself criticized by the members of the bar 
he prepared an evasive answer, which he 
published in one of the evening papers, 
modifying his statements, except as to the 
few justices of the peace who are his neigh- 
bors and with whom he is doing business. It 
does not seem reasonable that he should not 
know to what extent the justice system 
affects business, the poor, the general credit 



THE JUSTICE-SHOP 55 

and the safety of the people who live in or 
visit Chicago. 

It is not the title or name of the court that 
we want changed, but the system. Have a 
judge under a salary, so that he is not inter- 
ested in the outcome of the litigation sub- 
mitted to him to such an extent that he would 
suffer at the loss of a permanent customer 
unless he extended to him special and unfair 
favors at the expense of innocent litigants, 
thus making a travesty of justice. 

Under the present conditions the justice 
of the peace needs to advertise his business 
just as the merchant does his wares, and un- 
less he will treat his customers as they want 
him to treat them they will become customers 
of another justice who will. The income of 
a justice is the money he receives from liti- 
gants as costs of their respective suits, and 
he is, in many cases, equally interested with 
the plaintiff — his customer. The loss of 
certain customers would mean the loss of 
hundreds of dollars annually to the justice, 
which would not be the case if he were a 
salaried magistrate. And in most of the cases 
the justice does not get his fee until he col- 
lects it from the victim by the force of the 
execution issued by himself as judge. 

WANTS JUSTICES ON SALARY 

Why not put the justice on a salary.^ He 
has to make his living, and if the community 
will not pay him a fixed stipend he will make 



56 THE BRIEF 

. money off the people individually, as they 
fall into his snares. He does not go into 
politics for fun; he wants to make money 
while he holds the office, and he is bound to 
do it. 

The attorney who so ably championed the 
justices well knows that very few of them 
ever made any kind of a living until they got 
their jobs as justices, and he also knows that 
they are not elected by the people. They 
are elected by the judges of the courts of 
record, who select their choices from the 
applicants on file. But if the system were 
better, it would be an inducement for lawyers, 
and good lawyers, to aspire for such appoint- 
ments or elections. 

The records show that most justices, after 
filing an application for the office, send written 
petitions to the several judges of the same 
political faith begging humbly for their sup- 
port and stating what a large number of 
votes they have behind them, and so forth. 

No man engaged in the lower class of po- 
litical work ever was a good lawyer, and cer- 
tainly not a good judge, and that is the rank 
from which the average justice of the peace 
is picked. 

COURT SHARES IN PROFITS 

Often warrants are issued causing the ar- 
rest and disgrace of people, because the costs 
of such warrants are clear profit to the justice, 
and because the justice needs the money. 



TEE JUSTICE-SHOP 57 

If such a justice were under a salary he would 
subject the applicant for the arrest of peo- 
ple to critical examinations before depriving 
men of their liberties. When a person is ar- 
rested — and in a multitude of cases on some 
put-up job, to extort money from him — he 
looks for a bondsman. The constable and 
the justice's clerk summon a professional 
bondsman at short notice, who will sign 
bond for the victim in consideration of what- 
ever money or valuables he has on his person, 
which is a booty immediately divided in the 
justice-shop — and there is hardly any justice- 
shop in Chicago that could stand searchlight 
as against this practice. This is usually done 
in the case of strangers, poor people, and 
travelers of little influence — and this crime 
is consummated in some justice-shop or other 
in every hour of the day. 

Collection concerns file cases by the hun- 
dreds, usually small bills, against all classes 
of people. In many cases when a poor person 
is sued for some small or unjust claim, and 
he is inside the exemption limits, he pays no 
attention to it, but lets it go by default. He 
does not know that he has to file a schedule 
of his property with the justice in order to 
avail himself of the exemption, and the next 
move is for a constable to carry away his fur- 
niture and whatever other earthly goods he 
has. 



58 THE BRIEF 

CONSTABLE ADDS TO EVIL 

The constable is not on a salary. It would 
not pay him to inform poor people of their 
rights of exemption and of the necessity of 
the schedule. If he should, he would not 
have a chance to levy and make his com- 
mission. 

In thousands of instances, when collection 
concerns sue, and the defendant appears for 
trial, they will ask for continuances, and they 
ask for continuances as often as the de- 
fendant appears. When he becomes dis- 
couraged at wasting his time, and probably 
loses his employment through such persecu- 
tion, and once fails to appear, the justice 
enters judgment by default against him. 

Often such cases are set for a certain day. 
After service has been made on the defendant 
the collection "lawyer" instructs the justice- 
shop to set his case for some later day. The 
defendant appears and waits a whole day 
and does not hear his case called. He does 
not know what to make of it, and the case 
being too small to justify the engagement 
of an attorney, he goes home. The next thing 
he hears is that the constable is there with 
his execution. 

The only thing the victim can do is to ap- 
peal to the courts of record. Appeals are 
technical and complicated, and in most cases 
they would involve greater expense than the 
judgment amounts to. If you complain to 



THE JUSTICE-SHOP 59 

the justice of the fraud he will tell you to 
appeal. He knows that but a small percent- 
age will appeal on account of the expense and 
the necessity of bond and attorneys' fees, 
which the average victim cannot furuish or 
afford. 

SLIGHT CHANCE POR REDRESS 

In some instances persons sued for small 
bills go and settle, taking their receipts. 
They are promised a withdrawal of the suit. 
Nevertheless, in thousands of cases default 
judgments are taken in routine order, although 
in many cases the justice knows of the set- 
tlement outside of court. If you complain, 
the justice will tell you to appeal. Soon 
thereafter the judgment is assigned to some 
"concern" in that kind of business, and the 
poor man is again persecuted, by reason of 
the justice system. 

The justice-shop of Chicago is the most 
terrible tribunal in the world. It is capable 
of doing more harm than any court of record, 
and that in such a way as not to leave a trace 
of any injustice for evidence against it. Its 
personnel and its connections are one clique, 
always prepared with defenses, with a class 
of hangers-on, ready and willing to swear to 
anything for its protection and with the proof 
of its sinister practices always destroyed. 

A few days after this article appeared the new 
law was passed. 



VIII 

THE RHOADES CASE 

JUST then, as a young lawyer, I had the de- 
Hght of having a case against the leader of 
these justices of the peace, whose name was 
Rhoades. All the business I had with him so 
far was that a Mrs. Cash had complained to me 
as the "Counselor" that he would not turn over 
to her certain amounts of money that he had 
collected from debtors of hers as her justice. 
I had called that complaint to his attention 
and he went and settled with Mrs. Cash. Now 
I represented his wife — a real pay-client. She 
had every grievance in the code against him. 
To be short, I sued him as her lawyer for separate 
maintenance, and to get him out of her house 
for endangering her life and being a nuisance 
generally, and for divorce. He was a member 
of the justices' association, one of the strata or 
substrata of the many institutions of "barna- 
cles upon the ship of state" of a big city. It 
was long known as an organization of bad men. 
They were banded together for the purpose of 
helping each other make money and to shield 
and protect each other from the clutches of the 
law, if ever they should happen to be overta*ken. 
Rhoades engaged counsel, of the sort that he knew 
best — the very dregs of the justice-shop practi- 



THE RHOADES CASE 61 

tioners, such as held themselves out as "shovelers 
of dirt" in the courts. Rhoades said if I would 
not drop his wife's case he would ruin me, "would 
do me dirt," and "would drag his wife's name 
in the mire." He tried to live up to his threat. 
He made additional threats: he said he would 
have me waylaid. That he found impossible. 
People did waylay in Chicago in those days, and 
he was one of the chief contractors at such 
work, as the evidence later disclosed; and it 
was well known that organizations like his were 
behind the way layings. But that could only 
happen to those who walked or lurked in the 
dark or drank immoderately. I tried to walk 
in the light, and those of his gang who fol- 
lowed and shadowed me could not corner me.. 
Nor was I afraid of physical violence, as I knew 
every trick of that stratum of men: for had I not 
a multitude of letters in regard to these criminals 
from people whom they were blackmailing con- 
tinuously because in the past, and for consider- 
ations, they had been in league with them.f^ Nor 
did I know what fear really is. And to fear is 
against my religion, too: and these adventures 
never changed that. 

The Rhoades case was the sensation of Chicago 
— and nationally, while it lasted. It gave the 
judge — a Jew of the pork-eating type who 
looked it — sitting in judgment over it a lot 
of publicity; so he saw to it that it remain before 
the public long, and he succeeded in spreading 
it out to last months. He hated me, too, for 
once he overheard me say that one can always 



62 THE BRIEF 

tell a bird of prey from its crooked beak, and 
he grabbed for his nose. On another occasion 
— I prosecuted his best friend for crime. There 
was a third occasion — but the details of that 
he might deny, and I could not prove them. 
Now was his chance to get even. Judge Mack's 
job was elective; and this was cheap advertising; 
and he posed for the galleries wonderfully. He held 
night sessions, too, and at such sessions he had all 
his relatives and wife sitting right and left of him 
on the bench, making it look more like a com- 
bination of the personnel of the pawnshop and 
the frippery than a tribunal of justice. During 
the pendency of this case complaint was made 
against me by Rhoades and his friends, before 
the "special committee of the bar association," 
asking it to move to disbar me, pleading all that 
stigmatizing persecution which I sustained at 
the hands of the Delahuns and those they enlisted, 
as their reason, alleging that that branded me as 
immoral and therefore unworthy of remaining 
a member of the bar. The papers filed with the 
association, charging "bastardy" and "bigamy," 
naturally made " deliciously " nasty reading and 
fine food for the exploitation of "modern journal- 
ism." In Illinois there seems to be no law against 
newspapers' discussing private hearings of that 
sort. In fact those hearings are purposely made 
" private " in order to enable the committee of 
the " bar association " to give to the press such 
misreports as they desire: or white- washed re- 
ports, if a friend of theirs is " investigated." But 
against those who " stand in " the most serious 



THE RHOADES CASE 63 

complaint would go right straight to the waste- 
basket. That is the way organized gentlemen 
learned in the law do, in Chicago. Even plead- 
ings of pending cases are discussed in the press: 
and gentlemen of the shyster class do make capi- 
tal of that: for the editors do thirst for morbid 
stuff that is loud, and the shyster does seek the 
good will of the newspaper: and think of the ad- 
vertising, and the consequent political chances, too! 
When shysters want to undo one, that is the way 
they start; they do something that will enable 
the newspapers to print scandal with impunity. 
Every newspaper wants at least two sensations 
every day; and if they get the least color of 
encouragement and legality they will find matter 
for blood-curdling food for the minds of the lower 
classes, the returns of which will fill their coffers; 
and at the same time the lust of the enemy is 
satisfied and his case strengthened — free of 
charge. I declined to talk for publication: first, 
because there were so many things to say that 
I had not time for them; and second, because 
I did not think the newspapers to be the proper 
courts to try cases in; whilst Rhoades and his 
friends went to every editor in town with files 
of manuscript all ready for printing — Rhoades 
shedding tears and complaining that his wife 
was in love with me and that I wanted to divorce 
him in order to marry her! He was one of those 
short, fat, crimson-faced, baldheaded gentlemen 
with a fringe of red at the neck who could shed 
tears at will — and now he wanted sympathy — 
and what is more valuable sympathy than that 



64 THE BRIEF 

of the press, and where is an easier way to obtain 
it than by going to each editor with a band of 
justice-shop lawyers weepingly, asserting that 
one's home is being broken up by a man with 
such "evidences" against him! I stuck to the 
issue. My personal griefs were deep, mute, 
not for the press, and too sacred for such cattle 
to comprehend. Nor did I seek sympathy. Nor 
did the newspapers offer sympathy — they sought 
sensation, blood-curdling and red-hot. 

In order to make my fall the heavier the news- 
papers announced that I was the greatest lin- 
guist, the most prominent lawyer, of royal blood, 
with a string of degrees of learning, a social lion, 
and all that, to contrast with what they now 
resolved me to be known as — that monster who 
would break up a home — and they padded 
that with the story of the litigations through 
that nasty gang I fell in with in Pittsburg from 
which I was trying to emerge, which operated 
just as lying down with unwashed dogs ren- 
ders one inflicted with fleas hard to rid. The 
papers exaggerated even that, to make a 
foundation for the new scandal. Then the bar 
association, too, put in some perversions of its 
own, for the sake of additional packing: it said 
that I had advertised legal advice free and charged 
when people came to me, which it knew to be 
false. I was marked for slaughter because the 
people could get free advice in my column, and 
because they saw in me a promising man and a 
power for good. What good I had tried to do 
was not even thought of now. They had to 



THE RHOADES CASE 65 

crush me before I grew. Newspapermen hinted 
for blackmail, in consideration of which they 
would let up; two managing editors actually 
asked me for it, in vain. 

If people only knew what an ordinary, irrespon- 
sible class makes up the staff of the average 
newspaper! 

What few clients I now had could not help 
reading those inevitable misreports. A young 
lawyer who starts out as I did usually gets the 
poorer class of clients anyway, and of those not 
always the most desirable. When they read 
the falsehoods furnished to the press by the 
myrmidons of the justice-shop system, of the 
counsel of Rhoades, and of the bar association, 
the first thing they did was go and ask the 
secretary of the bar association what he thought 
about it: for the newspapers announced that it 
was this gang that was hounding me. One 
Fogle was its secretary and official myrmidon. 
He advised people to demand their retainers 
back if they paid any, and if they failed to get 
them back to come and complain to him, and 
he would champion them. He assured them that 
I was doomed for disbarment. He offered other 
inducements to criminals who would put their 
signatures to things he would typewrite. At this 
rate, proud that I was, and not desirous to rep- 
resent clients against their wishes, I soon became 
almost penniless. Some of these poor clients, 
heretofore humble and respectful, now came in 
boldly and insolently: and almost all were less 
respectful now. Some of them had such papers 



66 THE BRIEF 

with me as affected their respective cases. Others 
were poor people who had not any money — but 
when the bar association had told them they had 
"better get them back," after having read all 
those stories, they naturally demanded back 
whatever they could get — retainers, papers, 
anything. I returned every cent of retainer 
and every file. In some cases I had done a great 
amount of work and spent some money and 
received not a cent as yet, but they were welcome 
to all that. Many clients had implicit con- 
fidence in me, however: and I shall ever remain 
thankful to them, for without those few touches 
of kindness my plight would have been entirely 
unendurable. A man named Baude had no case 
at all. The agents of the bar association had 
sent him to retain me for a "case." He paid 
some on account. When I found he had no such 
case I returned his $25 and took his receipt and 
ordered him out. The court in its printed "re- 
port" uses the name of this man as having been 
ordered out of my oflfice at the point of a revolver. 
The revolver part is false: and it is remarkable 
that the "opinion" fails to state that I returned 
his money first. A Mrs. Baker had troubles 
with her husband. They were suing each other. 
I guaranteed some small bills for her — she was 
a small client, there were not many much bigger. 
In fact, all sorts were welcome so long as their 
causes seemed just. Beginners seldom get big 
people or big cases. She owed me some sixty- 
odd dollars. The court costs alone were to be 
over ten dollars; then there had to be the sheriff. 



THE RHOADES CASE 67 

a stenographer, and some legal advertising to 
pay for. She had asked for leave to pay a few 
dollars every month, a petition of hers to be 
filed when my office was paid in full. By now 
she had paid up some forty-six dollars and had not 
shown up for several months. I did not know 
that she had now gone back to her husband and 
lived with him. She went to the bar association, 
for she had heard that clients were getting back 
their retainers at the instigation of the bar asso- 
ciation. She told their secretary that she had 
engaged my office months ago, had made pay- 
ments on account, had gone back to her husband, 
and that she wanted to know her rights. Secre- 
tary Fogle told her in routine manner to demand 
the return of her payments. She came up and 
said that a certain lawyer, whose name she did 
not desire to mention, told her that if she would 
let him get a divorce for her he would marry her; 
and so she would like me to return her payments 
on account. I did not think competition was 
quite so bad. She came up a number of times, 
every time with a different subterfuge. By now 
I had spent a lot of money and had sold sets of 
books in order to be able to cope with the de- 
mands to return those small retainers, many of 
which had been more than earned long ago. 
The papers hooted at me day by day. To this 
person I would not have returned a cent if I had 
had a million. No one was entitled to a cent 
back. The Court, in its published "finding," was 
equally unjust in printing this name in that in- 
decent and untruthful manner. 



68 THE BRIEF 

Complications were continuously planned by 
the justices' association, the bar association, and 
counsel for Rhoades, "morally" supported by 
Delahun and the press. My enemies knew that 
Bethea hated me. They knew that when post- 
office "inspectors" once become interested in 
hounding one, they could always be again enlisted; 
for they want to be conspicuous and to finish 
a job. I was a job. They want to make a 
pretense at doing something. They want to be 
mentioned in the papers; they have their ambi- 
tions. They want the good- will and influence 
of the bigger men in politics, for even judges and 
other public officials were always on their knees 
to gain their favor. The bar association was 
useful before election to those whose candidacies 
it indorsed in the papers. Bethea felt his impor- 
tance greatly. Politics was his means of liveli- 
hood. I had called him a scoundrel and a liar 
in open court. He remembered how he had put 
the Government to great expense and yet could 
not "land" me. It was figured out by this low 
lot that if they could just get up something that 
would give him a color of a chance at me, Bethea 
would do his worst : and that would not cost 
a cent, for the Government pays for it. When 
we fight in the trenches we know this, that we 
fight men who serve their country, and it is a 
fair, face-to-face, grapple to the death: but when 
we fight corruption, or worse still, corruption 
backed by big interests and supported by officials 
on the Government's payroll, we fight not patriots 
but enemies of their own and every civilization: 



TEE RHOADES CASE 69 

anarchists who enjoy citizen's privileges unduly, 
snakes in the grass who, like skunks, will stigma- 
tize us by the contact whether we are wrong or 
right. 

I lived, in the summer of 1905, in a suburb 
called Chicago Lawn. That is where Rhoades 
lived. When I was called into the case of his 
wife against him, and when, to retaliate, he began 
to organize his forces, and got his "complaint" 
against me before the bar association by proxy, 
for the purpose of throwing all the obstruction 
possible in my way as counsel for his wife, 
he circulated such stories as were best calcu- 
lated to serve his purposes among the com- 
mon gossips of such an ignorant community. 
Every one added a little to everything he 
and she heard, until the atmosphere was dark 
with the most incredible tales about me. Per- 
haps luckily, I did not know everything that 
was going on, for I went to my office early and 
returned around midnight. Some of these peo- 
ple who had been gossiping were really too com- 
mon to be noticed. But I was sensitive. I had 
already suffered more than my share. Anon 
I learned from experience, too, that it is these 
irresponsible bipeds that make and unmake 
reputations; for the nicer people do not slander, 
do not libel, do not patch up tales and invent 
lies, and do not hire themselves out for petty 
favors to gossip for the purpose of blackening 
up a name. I called up the editress of the subur- 
ban paper, and she answered that her lawyer 
and preacher both told her that it was proper to 



70 THE BRIEF 

say and print anything about a divorced man; 
and she beheved wifeless men ought to be in 
prison! These poor wretches were so common 
that it was a social distinction for them to 
be recognized by even such as Rhoades — for 
the justice of the peace passed for a great man 
among the natives, almost as much so as the 
saloon-keeper. It was a ^ocial rise to them and 
a chance at revenge; for now they were acting 
against the interests of the wife of this justice, 
who was not of the sort that would associate with 
them. TVTien the lot I heard seemed unbearable, 
I wrote some of them letters saying that if they 
did not stop that sort of gossip I would have the 
law after them. I cited what had come to my 
attention. Rhoades himself had known all about 
me. Since then I learned that the tale-bearers 
who brought "stories" to me were a part of his 
plot. Anyway, I had written. That is just 
what was wanted — letters from me. There 
were now fresh envelopes in which letters had 
come from me, and the envelopes were post- 
marked. Now, to put up a job, all they had to 
do was make letters to fit those envelopes and 
there was work to give to United States Attorney 
Bethea. 

Here was another case against me. "Now 
I have got him down," said Bethea, "and he has 
not got any friends. I have got him." This in 
my presence and hearing, and in the name of 
the country! Moreover, there was an iron cage 
in the corner of a room in which defendants were 
held temporarily. He invited Rhoades and his 



THE RHOADES CASE 71 

friends to stand in front of that cage and watch 
for me to be imprisoned in it. To the great 
dismay of Mr. Rhoades, he saw his own wife 
and mother-in-law among those who offered bail 
for me. Bethea would not accept them and 
insisted that the marshal cage me. Marshal 
Ames was in politics, true, but a gentleman: 
he went to see Judge Kohlsaat, who said that one 
property holder's bond is as good as the other's 
— and that if I preferred these people's bond it 
had to be accepted. But by now, after Mr. 
Bethea did his very, very best, it was impossible 
to get an indictment. His witnesses were too 
well known to be trash. They were not from 
far enough away, as was Delahun. Months later, 
and to his credit be it said, Bethea took an interest 
in the matter, and he sent me word by one of his 
assistants that he believed I was the most perse- 
cuted man that ever lived. That ended his 
relations with me. The next case he took up was 
the prosecution of the Standard Oil Company, 
which later culminated in the twenty-nine million 
dollar fine fiasco. A few months later he was 
himself appointed a United States judge, and his 
law-partner became the prosecutor. 

These forged Chicago Lawn letters were also 
used as evidence of "bad character" against 
me before the bar association, and are referred 
to in the "finding" secured hy fraud, default and 
collusion of the Supreme Court which soon fol- 
lowed, saying that it was not becoming a lawyer 
to write them. There are details in connection 
with every item herein that themselves would 



72 THE BRIEF 

fill a book; but attempt is made to state the facts 
and their connections with each other very 
briefly. 

While all this was on, the suburban editress 
wrote me, asking sardonically whether I intended 
to spend the next summer at the Lawn. I 
returned the letter, indorsed, stating that I might 
if I decided to spend another season in a com- 
munity of cattle. This letter was also offered 
by the bar association as evidence of bad char- 
acter ! 



IX 

THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 

I SPENT one summer in that suburb because 
that was within my means, still within rapid 
transit distance from my office, and because I 
was not familiar enough with its population in 
the beginning. Here is an extract from my 
diary depicting its social life: 

"There was not much formality at the 
Lawn Club dances. We had gentlemen with 
business coats and low vests, gentlemen in 
dress suits and red scarfs, gentlemen in long 
frock-coats and soft shirts, minus neckties 
and cuffs; we had gentlemen in blue shirts 
and short trousers and suspenders; gentle- 
men in white stiff shirts, with fancy buttons 
in the front buttonholes of the neckbands, 
but no collars or vests or coats on; we had 
gentlemen in boots and overalls; and we 
had some dancing in the garbs of their honest 
toil, which varied from janitorial and like 
occupations to the professions. There was 
Alderman Butterwoth in his inevitable red 
shirt, his wife's make, to match her hair, 
and Louis Reinhard in the long coat which 
his new wife had bought for him when she 
gave up her job in the laundry and married 



74 THE BRIEF 

him, of which fact neither the husband nor 
the wife ever failed to inform new acquaint- 
ances nor to oft repeat lest it be forgot. . . . 

"There was a men's room at the club. 
This room contained ten chairs and some 
forty cuspidors. The cuspidors, it was often 
lamented by the members, had been matter 
of useless expenditure, for the men acted just 
as they would at home! All would try, it 
seemed, to emulate each other in the volume 
of expectorating, and in the telling of stories 
for men only. In my family no tobacco was 
ever used. I never saw anything quite like 
this. I could not bear the atmosphere, and 
the men — without any hint of impropriety, 
however — decided that I preferred the 
company of the ladies." 

When it was about time for the atmosphere 
to be fully poisoned, the politicians in charge of 
the bar association deemed it proper to file dis- 
barment proceedings in the Supreme Court. The 
case was drawn in the name of the state's attor- 
ney of the county, who, being a politician, allowed 
the association to do anything in his name, if 
indeed he was not proud to be noticed by them; 
for they will reciprocate by indorsement for 
future elections. He preferred not to know 
the facts. Up to now, and for a long time, the 
bar association only tortured me by the false- 
hoods they gave out to the press. My health 
was beginning to fail, for in addition to all this, 
the enforced economies had begun to make their 



THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 75 

ravages. I did engage an older lawyer, but 
the only connection he had with it was to accept 
a retainer of a hundred dollars. He visited 
one of the hearings as a spectator, like other 
lawyers did. That is all. He could have been 
useful; he could have saved me from many 
indignities. A defendant without a lawyer is 
treated with contempt anyway; and in this 
case, nothing used to please that mob better than 
to have me alone all to themselves. This Mr. 
Elliott later made the explanation that the 
association had pestered and bothered him and 
put up jobs on him until he joined it; and that he 
simply could not afford to antagonize them. 
I wished he had returned my retainer, if that is 
the kind of lawyer he was. He was then start- 
ing out his two sons, also to be lawyers — such 
as he was. 

It was not until about now that I learned that 
my work as the "Counselor" was not favored 
by the bar association. I had no one to consult. 
I was robbed and damaged. It was a job and 
a means of becoming known and being occupied. 
I was useful. Lawyers seemed to resent that 
people could find legal advice free. That explains 
their ready compliance with the request to hound 
me, when I already had other enemies to help 
them and a colorable file of previous troubles. 
But they did not have the decency to tell me their 
true reason or purpose. They never have. The 
only lawyers who might have had any personal 
grievances against me were such as I made 
return moneys they obtained by cheating and 



76 THE BRIEF 

robbing poor clients who came to my attention 
as the "Counselor." These shysters certainly 
did fear me: and there were some more that I 
was preparing for, whose clients had complained. 
Many of them knew how much I had done toward 
making shysters be more or less decent : and many 
of them knew that they might soon be due to hear 
from me, when I got to them. And yet, the 
only suffering I ever inflicted was to get them to 
give up moneys they misappropriated, to those 
to whom they belonged, less a reasonable fee. And 
since that time, especially during my casual con- 
nections with the office of the attorney -general of 
the United States in anti-trust cases, I had occa- 
sion to find that these members of the "grievance 
committee" that had doomed me years before, 
these leaders of the bar, are actually marked and 
numbered in that department among the biggest 
crooks of the country! And yet, as "leaders" 
of the Chicago bar, they almost pass for respect- 
able; they certainly were a great influence in 
my day: and all that weight was concentrated 
to crush — me ! In order that honest people 
might fathom the large amount of evil organized 
shyster practice can commit, just think of the do- 
ings of one crooked lawyer you have known — ■ 
and, mentally, multiply it, and back it up with 
other people's money, left to them to spend as 
they please — and give them the power to control, 
if not terrorize, the courts! They try to control 
courts by every means human nature can devise, 
varied only to suit local and present conditions: 
but one thing is general: all the judges of the 



THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 77 

State are made honorary members of such 
associations. 

The Supreme Court referred the petition to 
disbar to a pestiferous Kttle poHtician named 
Rush, "master in chancery," to be heard and 
reported by him. In order that people who did 
not attend the many sessions may understand 
the proceeding, they must take the word "mob" 
Hterally. I was treated as by a mob; assaults, 
leers, sneers, snubs — • there was nothing in the 
shape of an indignity that I was not subjected 
to by these lawyers of dirty shirt and frayed 
garment. The "master" fell into the spirit 
of the thing and became a part of the mob. It 
was all I could do to pay the stenographer's 
costs, for I depended on my earnings, and earn- 
ing was now impossible. The newspapers saw 
to that. I desired to perpetuate my evidence 
and to keep a copy of it, although I had doubts 
as to the ultimate justice I would receive, because 
my means were limited, my health failing, trick- 
eries many and too boldly ostensible — whilst 
I was alone there, without even a witness that 
was not a member of the mob. Under the 
circumstances it was impossible to earn even my 
office expenses. Indeed people whom I had 
befriended, people who usually make the best 
of friends, seemed to avoid me. Those who did 
not believe or suspect — wondered. People are 
not any too grateful, anyway, when they seem 
not to see chances of additional favor. And 
but for a few sympathizers as well might I have 
been a leper for the way I seemed to be shunned. 



78 TEE BRIEF 

Rush would have such disorders in his place 
as to break up hearings suddenly. This pro- 
longed the duration of the case, gave the papers 
occasion for additional sensation, and gave him 
and his friends additional opportunity to give 
the press malicious misreports that were offensive 
and humiliating to me and advertising for them- 
selves. For instance: once this master, Rush, 
told the reporters that I was confronted in his 
"court" by a number of women, each of whom 
identified me as her husband. The lie was 
printed. The master denied being the author 
of it. The reporters swore he was — and so on 
with other such reports from time to time. That 
is one of the many ways shysters and politicians 
advertise themselves, drag down their victims, 
and at the same time secure the friendship of 
a filthy press, useful for future favor, and the 
gratitude of the — bar association! 

Master Rush did not always act like a vulture. 
He had occasional normal moments or lucid 
intervals apparently : or his normal moments may 
have been prompted by interests, as were the 
apparently abnormal. Anyway he sometimes 
told me his troubles; he gave me some of his 
confidences, although I suspected that he hoped 
that I would begin to confide with him if I had 
anything to confide. I really had nothing, nor 
would I have trusted him if I had. I recalled 
the treachery of the United States office holders, 
and was afraid to talk much with him: for I 
feared he might swear I said something I did not 
say. Once he came and explained that the law 



THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 79 

allowed him a fee at so much a hundred words 
taken by the stenographers before him, and 
that I would have to furnish a bond securing 
his fee, of about $20 per hour, or pay from time 
to time in advance, or I was not entitled to de- 
fend, and I should be disbarred as by default. 
Whilst such an approach ought to be shocking 
to the average man, but very few things would 
have shocked me; and I pleaded my financial 
condition to him and offered him my promissory 
notes. He said he did not want the notes, and 
that some day I could make shorthand reports 
for him in his law practice and give him receipted 
bills, and he would get what amounts would be 
due me from his clients and keep them. Any- 
thing was reasonable to me as long as it indicated 
the possibility of my getting justice, if there was 
any to get, or at least of getting in my evidence. 
Nor did he quite seem to believe that I was 
"broke." I lived a proud life, did not talk 
troubles, or ask favors, did not make debts, paid 
all bills promptly and tried to be respectable in 
my attire — a perfect symptom of riches to the 
superficial observer. 

There was an understanding between the 
master in chancery, the bar association, the 
justices' association, and Mack — the man who 
sat in judgment on the Rhoades case — that the 
master and Mack hear the Rhoades case and the 
disbarment case alternately in installments, al- 
lowing the injection of the evidence belonging 
to each case into the other, for that insured 
better advertisement for all of them, more noto- 



80 THE BRIEF 

riety and trouble for me, and a prolongation of 
these suits which just then were the paramount 
topics in the press. By now I resigned as the 
"Counselor," for it was a losing job financially, 
anyway, and I could not bear to see the accumu- 
lation of the mail to be answered. I answered 
all the inquiries still due by mail, and a great 
deal that was forwarded to me for years after- 
ward. After that the paper I had so served 
printed in the same vein as the others, and printed 
those falsehoods about me in large red type. 
It printed "interviews" with me that never hap- 
pened, and some of them years after I had dis- 
barred Chicago from my life for its ingratitude! 



X 

THE TESTIMONY 

IN the Rhoades case the wife proved a pitiful 
state of cruelty, violence, abuse, nonsupport, 
general neglect, and criminal intimacy with 
women of his own type. It was all clearly 
proven by the testimony of his best friends and 
his own ten-year-old boy. He had played the 
innocent husband before the public so far. Now 
his only salvation was to show, if he could, that 
the wife was as bad as he was — a plea of re- 
crimination. 

He collected his friends in Chicago Lawn, 
whose testimony was to the effect that they had 
seen Mrs. Rhoades and her mother talk with me 
on my way to and from the depot while I lived 
in the Lawn the preceding summer, and that 
they had heard from Mr. Rhoades that I was 
bad morally. This was to show me of bad 
reputation; the idea being to show that she, 
too, had been in bad society. This was to live 
up to the legal definition of "reputation" — what 
people say about you — and Rhoades was "the 
people," who told his friends, the people. It 
would be nonsense to try to figure that out for an 
equivalent to his being found by his old friends 
who testified with his "Helene" and others 
behind locked doors, or to his correspondences 
with such women, unfit to quote here. 



8£ TEE BRIEF 

Then a Miss Frazier, step-daughter of a good 
woman in whose house I hved, testified that 
Mrs. Rhoades and her mother had been at my 
residence to consult me, and while there Mrs. 
Rhoades played the piano and sang, and that she 
suspected the ladies came not to consult me but 
to visit me because they liked me. Nellie Frazier 
brought a tittering cousin along, whom she assured 
would get her picture in the paper for corrobo- 
rating her! Nellie left the stand saying: "I am 
for Judge Rhoades!" She was an unfortunate, 
one-eyed girl, whose mother took the stand later 
and testified that she was very low mentally, 
easy to impose on; that not long ago she had 
run away with a boy many years her junior; 
and that Mr. Rhoades had promised her fifty 
dollars for testifying what she was taught to say 
and she in turn had promised to buy her father 
a suit of clothes with the money. Her father was 
a bankrupt druggist and worked in the postal 
service. Rhoades and his lawyers summoned 
every one who ever saw me with his wife — ■ 
who, by the way, never went anywhere without 
her mother. For months before I filed the 
Rhoades suit I delayed the matter, in the hope 
of satisfactory arrangements in the family, and 
so complaints at my ofiice and negotiations with 
the members of the family prolonged an acquain- 
tance before this. Nellie Frazier never got the 
fifty dollars. 

Another such witness was Kennedy, a night 
watchman from the Morrison Hotel. He was 
brought in to say that Mrs. Black and Mrs. 



THE TESTIMONY 83 

Rhoades had been evicted from that place for 
drinking, and that I had something to do with 
the case. I was then and have for years before 
been a daily guest of the restaurant of that place, 
called the Boston Oyster House. I have had 
these ladies with me there. The hotel used to 
send me Christmas presents, as perhaps they did 
to other patrons: and I received one from it 
within a short time of this hearing. These 
women never touched a drop of liquor and 
neither did I. On cross-examination the wit- 
ness admitted that some two years before 
— and long before I had known the Rhoades 
family — two women from Iowa were insulted 
in that hotel by the proprietor and that their 
husbands telegraphed me to get a written apology 
from the hotel or sue it. I got the apology. 
On cross-examination I brought out the names 
of the women, the date of the incident, and 
cited the proprietor, who produced the register 
of the hotel, which I still retain, to nail the 
lie. Then Kennedy explained that it was so 
long ago that he was all mixed up on it; and 
also that he was promised $25 for testifying as 
he did; which, by the way, he never got. 

The judge listened with all the delight of a 
villain to such perjury, overlooked the wrongs, 
and never held one of the crooks for the crime. 
And when I would ask a question to which he 
knew the response would be favorable to my 
client he would screech — with that voice like 
a whistle — "Objection sustained!" although 
there was no objection. He was there to hear 



84 THE BRIEF 

one side only; and to have heard two sides 
seemed inconsistent with the pohcy to which he 
was pledged. 

A laundry man named Israel Louis, who belonged 
to the same lodge with Judge Mack, testified 
that he had seen Mrs. Rhoades with her mother 
at my residence, and that is all. There was no 
use of cross-examining him much, except that 
I asked him whether or not once, since this case 
was pending, at the instigation of Rhoades, 
he and a Mrs. Decker, his friend whose husband 
was away, contrived together to lock the door 
of my room from the outside when Mrs. Rhoades 
and her mother were inside with me, which he 
admitted. The newspapers just gloated with 
a perversion of this incident. On the evening 
of that same day at least one yellow paper 
had it in red letters, and the others in large 
type, that I had written this man a special de- 
livery letter threatening his life if he came to 
testify and that is why he did not say more. 
Next morning I summoned the washman. He 
stated that he did say to Rhoades that he was 
asked by letter not to testify, but that he did not 
get any letter: and he did not speak of any 
threats. The fact was, he said, he did not want 
to be a witness. Rhoades promised him a sum 
in consideration of saying certain things which 
were not true. Rhoades, however, would not 
pay for the perjury in advance; and so, when 
summoned, Louis did not testify as agreed. 
But he knew Rhoades's profession, the crowd 
he belonged to, and feared him, so he made up 



THE TESTIMONY 85 

an excuse that he was asked by letter not to be 
a witness: and by the time Rhoades carried it 
to his lawyers and fellow-justices and to the 
newspapermen — the "reporters" of the yellow 
actually drafted a letter, signed my name, turned 
it in to the editor, and saw it printed. Perhaps 
the editor did it all. The judge could not be very 
hard on a brother of his lodge, so he just made 
Louis sit an hour in his chambers — for failing 
to lie about me in connection with Mrs. Rhoades 
as he had originally agreed with her "judicial" 
husband. This man Mack has since, by the 
fortunes of politics, been promoted to other 
public places and is still on the pay-roll. 

A Miss Cross, who testified she worked for a 
justice of the peace, said that Mr. Rhoades 
hired her to "shadow" Mrs. Rhoades and her 
mother; that the office in which she worked was 
in the house adjoining the ofiice building in which 
my office was; and that she saw on certain dates 
Mrs. Rhoades kiss me, in the presence of her 
mother. She said she was reading these facts 
from a diary which she held before her. This 
was about the most serious testimony against 
Mrs. Rhoades, although no man was ever kissed 
by a better woman. But it was not true. On 
cross-examination I asked the witness why she 
looked at the notebook while she testified, to which 
she replied that she was looking at the entries she 
had made at the various times in shorthand. 
I took the book from her hand, and there in short- 
hand were written the personal descriptions of 
Mrs. Rhoades and her mother, and of the clothes, 



86 THE BRIEF 

coats, and hats they were wearing, and nothing 
about kisses. Out of the "diary" two cards fell 
on the floor bearing the same data in the writing 
of Mr. Rhoades. In order to divert my attention 
Mr. Greenacre, a scorbutic gentleman in cellu- 
loid collar and slippers, one of the counsel for 
Rhoades, objected to my coming too close to the 
lady. I assured the court I would not touch 
this lady. When Miss Cross heard me read 
her shorthand notes aloud in court she "fainted." 
The judge accused me of being too strenuous in 
my cross-examination. He was abusive because 
facts were brought out in favor of my client. 
The woman was coached to faint in case she were 
cornered, and she obeyed. As the lawyers led 
her by the arms tenderly away from the stand she 
opened a bag and handed her photograph to a 
newspaperman, who saw that it was in the papers 
next day. When she "came to" I made her 
resume the stand for further cross-examination, 
when she admitted that to see into my office 
from where she "worked" was impossible, that 
she had been at some cheap places of entertain- 
ment with Rhoades and his lawyers, that Rhoades 
and his friends had given her money, that her 
employer, a justice of the peace and friend of 
Rhoades, told her to be as helpful as she could 
to Mr. Rhoades in the case, for that would help 
the cause of the justices' association to defeat 
the bill pending in the Senate to put them out of 
business. She also admitted that she spent such 
moneys as these people had given her in com- 
pany with another Bohemian woman, who also 



THE TESTIMONY 87 

agreed to help her in this "work" and to testify 
as instructed, tending to make out Mrs. Rhoades 
as bad as her husband was shown, in order to 
defeat her suit. At a certain signal from Rhoades 
or his brother or one of his crowd, or from a female 
" heart-story " writer for a yellow paper who was 
with them, the gang would issue a forced horse- 
laugh. When this became too great a nuisance, 
and useless to ask for decency, I told Mack, at 
last, that if he had a grain of decency he would 
put a stop to it. Then he told the " heart-story 
lady " to please desist! 

When "Justice" Rhoades, the defendant, took 
the stand he shed tears masterfully and said to 
the judge, fearfully, that before he testified 
I should be searched for a revolver in my clothes 
with which I intended to shoot him. This was 
for dramatic effect. He and his friends had long 
been shadowing and annoying me in the streets 
and in my office, and hounding me generally; 
and as I displayed no signs of fear, maybe he 
felt sure I had a revolver — and to carry one 
was against the law; to bring one into court, 
more so. He hoped, and so did his colleagues, 
that I would be fined there and then. What 
a wonderful effect that would have had in the 
papers! Of course I said I did not have any 
revolver, and that ended that spectacle. 

Between sessions Mack would send for Mrs. 
Rhoades to see him in his chambers, alone. She 
invariably came with her mother. At these 
interviews he would promise her all sorts of 
favors, if she would only dismiss me and get a 



88 THE BRIEF 

lawyer he would give her, free of charge. At 
other times he would threaten to take the boy 
from her if she would not look for another lawyer. 
He resented that she did not come without her 
mother. The reasons were plain: Mrs. Rhoades 
was respectable; and, also, she wanted a witness 
— her almost constant companion and mother. 
Invariably he would tell the women to keep 
from me the information that they had seen him! 
They reported everything to me, except the 
fact that they posed to the newspaper photog- 
raphers in spite of my instructions not to. The 
pictures would come out, but to the last the women 
would stick to the story that they did not 
know how those pictures were made; and they 
instructed even the boy, who was photographed 
with them — who must now be quite a man, 
somewhere — to stick to that story. This is 
the only thing I regret in my relations with them. 
I suppose they saw a lying press and thought 
they would mollify its venom and indecency by 
yielding, contrary to my advice. Anyway, every 
one begged them to deceive me. The enemy 
knew the chief trick whereby to defeat an adver- 
sary — by making trouble in the opposite camp. 
Feminine vanity, too, I suppose, had a great 
deal to do with it. It was one life's chance 
to see their pictures in the papers daily, for 
months. Still, I have seen men — as vain. 

During the hearings the court room was usually 
crowded with spectators, and officers kept hun- 
dreds out for lack of standing room. 

The lowest of the dregs of humanity, limited 



THE TESTIMONY 89 

in number only by the means of Rhoades and the 
fund he collected from his fellows, were enlisted 
to help drag the reputation of his wife down by 
trying to show, first, that she was as bad as he 
was, and second that her associations with me 
were as bad as his with the women with which 
the overwhelming undisputed evidence indicted 
him. It all was confuted by few but respectable 
witnesses, among them Dr. Alexander Proudfoot, 
Mr. W. F. Nehf, and Colonel Frank Marsh, 
whose testimonies were emphatic and unanimous. 
Sheer gratitude prompts me to quote at least 
one of them. Mr. Nehf said: 

"I own a lot of property in Chicago Lawn. 
All this array of human cattle from that town 
are beneath trash. Chicago Lawn is the cheapest. 
community I ever knew. I have known Mrs. 
Rhoades and her mother for years. Their law- 
yer's office is in the same building as mine. I 
know all three well: and whoever says a word 
against the character of any of them is a liar 
and beneath contempt." 

Mr. Nehf was excused without cross-exami- 
nation. 



XI 

TEE CHANCERY CROOK 

I WAS thrown alternately before Rush the 
master and Mack the judge. Nothing that 
was tolerable with Mr. Rush was permanent. 
No agreement was permanent. Also, there had 
been neither brawl nor challenge to fisticuffs for 
some time, and the monotony had to be broken 
again. So, during the proceeding of a hearing, the 
master, without any present provocation, called 
me a common debt-beat. I never owed any one 
a cent beyond about the tenth of the following 
month. I never had a collector in my place. 
I paid all bills by mail, by check. He said I 
owed him a master's fee, and that I ought to pay 
it. I reminded him of his agreement with me. 
I added, to be frank with him, that I did not think 
it was good practice, in the first place, nor is it 
written anywhere that it is just, that they should 
trump up a job like this on one at one's expense 
and then subject one to indignities just because 
one has not money left to pay at the rate of twenty- 
five cents a hundred words taken before him in 
shorthand, besides paying at that same rate for 
the transcript of the brawls of himself and his 
friends; but that I was willing to do what I could, 
and that I thought the agreement he had sug- 
gested, which I accepted for the sake of peace, 



THE CHANCERY CROOK 91 

was conclusive. The like conversation, differ- 
ing only in degrees of violence and abusiveness, 
was matter of frequent occurrence. It usually 
concluded with a condescension on his part to 
stand by the agreement. When he had nothing 
else to fight about he resented the fact that I 
kept a copy of the proceedings: he thought one 
copy ought to be enough — his copy. I told 
him that I wanted that copy, paid for it, and 
was entitled to it. It was hard to conclude 
anything with him. He said that if I paid him 
the money I paid the stenographer it would be 
that much less to his credit against me. I wanted 
a copy of the proceedings — and I have it. 

He was not an insane person; nor was any 
one in that group. They were simply unhanged 
villains. After these disorders motions would be 
made to the Supreme Court asking it to fine me 
because I insulted the master. The Supreme 
Court would order me to go to Springfield and 
listen to its reprimands and abuses: once it 
fined me fifty dollars. No matter what I pleaded, 
they never read my answers, and usually, after 
they ordered me to go to Springfield they refused 
to listen to me. They put me to that waste of 
time and expense for the fun of the persecution. 
The master's report was law to them. Maybe 
that is a good rule, but then there should have 
been an honest master: and the Supreme Court 
well knew what was going on. 

There were many licentiates at law on the 
side of the prosecution. I was alone. They all 
seemed to sit up nights wondering and thinking 



92 THE BRIEF 

out new schemes, new tricks, new indignities, 
and new troubles — for me. New things did 
happen. New forms of Kes told to the papers; 
or my office would be broken into in the hope of 
stealing documents. Always it was something 
unexpected. Besides looking out for my inter- 
ests, I had to watch out for some such surprises. 
They followed and hounded people who entered 
my office. They sent indecent anonymous letters 
to my friends. A Mr. and Mrs. Field, after 
leaving my office, were surprised by a bottle of 
vitriol being poured over them. It burned their 
clothes and their hands. The faces escaped, 
fortunately. Then the newspapers reported that 
Mrs. Field was an admirer of mine and a jealous 
rival poured vitriol over her — and the papers 
hooted. The residence telephone would ring doz- 
ens of times an hour all night long to break up 
my rest and render me obnoxious where I lived, 
calls alternating from requests of females to meet 
them to male voices insolently resenting the "mak- 
ing of appointments with their wives," until we 
got in the habit of muffling the bell. It does 
seem a shame that females or their names should 
always be used by specialists in the business of 
blackmail and the wrecking of reputations! I 
might as well have been attainted for all the pro- 
tection the law gave me. I was doomed. 

Every line of all the testimony was in my favor. 
The master had a copy of all the evidence pre- 
sented. I had documents which proved practi- 
cally every day of my life — even old passports 
which were issued for traveling in foreign countries. 



THE CHANCERY CROOK 93 

These were read and copied in evidence. The 
master resented that I would not let him keep 
these papers. That was one of the recent sur- 
prises. He demanded that I leave with him my 
documents as security for his costs as master in 
chancery. I would have parted with my life 
before I would have trusted him with one piece 
of that paper, and I indicated that sentiment; 
but I did give him copies of everything. Then 
he made his demands stronger. There was more 
disorder. I could not afford to pay any more 
fines, so I did not reply to him. His fellows 
leered, jeered, and scowled. Then he amended 
the order by demanding also my copy of the tran- 
script of the evidence I had submitted in defense. 
He already had a copy of it for his use. It was 
all of no avail. I packed my papers and left. 
Later he again sent me written notices to appear 
before him for continuation of the hearing next 
day, that I there and then pay him some hundreds 
of dollars for master's fee, that I surrender to 
him my copy of the evidence, together with all 
my documents. I had gone to his place too 
often; now I would not go again. In vain did 
I ask the Supreme Court for another master. 
They scowled at me. Then again, and at the same 
time, as a counter-motion to my petition for 
another master, this master made motion to 
the Supreme Court to fine me for contempt, 
for failing to obey his latest orders — to sur- 
render my papers, to pay him for acting as 
master, to appear before him for further hear- 
ings, and all. 



94 THE BRIEF 

The justices' and constables' fund was con- 
siderable. These desperate barnacles did all they 
could to annoy me on all sides. They would 
file suits in the names of fictitious parties or of 
each other in their several "courts," all to be 
heard at the same date and hour, well knowing 
that at such times I was to be either before Mack 
or Rush. The "suits" would be so many and 
at such distances apart, and I had my hands so 
full with so many things, that it was impossible 
to attend to them. They would enter judgments 
by default, as of course: their myrmidons, the 
constables, would then come to levy. At first 
I would pay the judgments, it seeming the cheap- 
est way out and there being no other way. But 
later the "judgments" became so many that 
I sent notices by registered mail, reciting my 
objections to the fraud and notifying them that 
any constable that would attempt to levy upon 
such fake judgments would be treated as a rob- 
ber should be. I won the case of Mrs. Rhoades: 
the justice had to get out and keep out of her 
house and pay alimony. 

Rhoades got all this money to spend because 
he succeeded in making his friends believe that 
if I was undone, so was every cause I was in- 
terested in, and then the status quo of the justice- 
shop system would be safe. It is wonderful 
how much money can be raised that way in a 
hurry, before people have time to think: but 
the pending bill meant everything to the justice- 
shop system and its kin chain of votaries and 
parasites. And even that fund had its vam- 



THE CHANCERY CROOK 95 

pires. Cheap lawyers hired themselves out to 
serve these interests at five and ten dollars a 
day, and obeyed like lackeys. State's Attorney 
Deneen, who later became governor, said that 
jurors and witnesses could be bought at fifty 
cents per case in Chicago. There were "lawyers" 
of that stamp galore, and all that would serve 
were enlisted here and now. These lawyers 
usually lived entirely on the victims and system 
of the justice-shop. Nay, Ogden, the lawyer 
I had dismissed for offering to sell out to Dela- 
hun, now offered his services to the bar association 
and the justices both. He was offered $10 as 
a witness if he had anything that would help 
them. He had nothing as a witness; he wanted 
to act as lawyer, for that would advertise him.. 
There being too many lawyers now, and every- 
thing being fixed as they wanted it, his applica- 
tion was merely filed. But one of the justices 
rendered a fake judgment against me in his 
favor. Then his partner called me up and said 
that if I shoot and kill any scoundrel who tries 
to levy on that judgment he would stand by, 
and vindicate me! Some time later Ogden 
stopped his buggy to say that if I would give 
him a hundred dollars he would cancel the judg- 
ment, give me $100 worth of stock in the Na- 
tional Home Buyers' Union, a corporation organ- 
ized to rob people of their savings lawfully: and 
also throw in a diploma from the law- school 
which he conducted making me a doctor of laws. 
I told him — where to go. That judgment was 
not paid. 



96 THE BRIEF 

The first evidence submitted before Rush was 
a copy of that fraudulently obtained default 
divorce decree of Pittsburg in which the exist- 
ence of a previous wife had been alleged. I met 
this by showing certified copies of the records 
of the New York City registry of marriages, 
where it was pretended I had been married, 
showing that the registry is forty years old, and 
that no one of my name married in New York 
in those forty years. I was now a gray-headed 
man of twenty-seven. I also produced Mr. 
Berthold Starke, engraver and cousin of Miss 
Starke, who testified that his said cousin was 
married in 1892 (when I was a schoolboy 
in Belgium), that she had ten children, and 
that she was now living in Philadelphia with 
the only man she ever married. Then the 
myrmidons introduced the certified copy of 
that "paternity" case of the Newburg woman 
whom Delahun had financed to come and sue, 
and who got her money and went back to her 
paramour. To this I produced letters from this 
same woman addressed to her friends, showing 
that she was still in a bawdy house. Then 
Dr. Putney, now dean of a law school and author 
of many law books, took the stand, and in his 
testimony, which covered several interrupted 
sessions, explained the manner in which counsel 
for the "State" cheated us out of the defense, 
that the trial was not fair, and that there was 
every evidence to clear me had I had a fair, 
honest, and decent trial. Then he was shown 
the postals which Delahun had written to him- 



TEE CHANCERY CROOK 97 

self in my name; and Dr. Putney said that he 
had known my writing for years and that those 
postals were not written by me, nor the letters 
which were made up to match the envelopes 
that I had addressed to the gossips of Chicago 
Lawn. There were many other people who knew 
my writing and testified that those papers were 
forgeries. 

Nothing remained now for the bar assassination 
but to make the best they could of — nothing. 
It was not really the association that acted. 
It let these shysters do the work. It was not 
necessary for it to act. The outcome was all 
fixed. It usually is, when organized shysters act, 
under a bar association charter. In many States 
these organized barnacles secured legislation to au- 
thorize the judges to direct the treasurers of the 
counties to pay fees — for such dirty work ! 

They presented the file of the divorce which I 
obtained, claiming that I obtained it irregularly, 
although no one claimed to be a loser by that 
decree because the folk in Pittsburg were appar- 
ently glad to get rid of me. Now they quibbled 
on the words "lived and cohabited," which were 
printed in the official two-cent form, which I 
had not erased. It was on the record of the 
stenographer's transcript on file and present that 
I explained to the court that in spite of that 
printed form the facts are just a desertion of two 
years and more ago and there was no "living 
and cohabitation." 

Mack of the Superior Court had told my 
enemies in advance that in the Rhoades case 



98 THE BRIEF 

he was going to have to allow separate main- 
tenance and permanent eviction of the husband 
from the wife's home because the evidence was 
strong: hut, that he would prolong the case as 
much as he could, would make it as hard for me 
as he could, and would treat me in such manner 
that I would have to go to ruin by the sheer 
weight of his persecutions. 

The hearings in both cases was mere matter of 
form. Results were prearranged. What took 
place in court was only for the galleries and its 
effect upon me and upon the public measures 
I was interested in for the general good. Mack 
took the weight of his office with him to Spring- 
field to lobby the Supreme Court and tell the 
judges that I ought to be disbarred. His nefa- 
rious doing in Chicago was not enough. Nor did 
any one ask why Mack should be so willingly 
active against me, or what I knew about him! 
(He would lie me out of a few things I would 
like to say: so I stick to the indisputable evi- 
dence on record in depicting him. The picture 
of him is not overdone.) He purposely let it 
be known that he did me harm in Springfield, 
and bragged of it to newspapermen, in order 
to gain the political following of the justice- 
shop, for whatever that might be worth, and the 
bar association! And although he concluded the 
Rhoades case in favor of my client, because 
the evidence was so overwhelming, he did not 
have the heart to do that decently. He supple- 
mented his "finding" by saying that I was 
insane: for that no sane man would have stood 



THE CHANCERY CROOK 99 

by Mrs. Rhoades as I did! This nasty observa- 
tion in open court was designed not only to 
make his fellow conspirators who sought to dis- 
credit me morally, and the head-line makers, 
happy, but in the idea that being also discounted 
mentally, as he would have it, would destroy my 
usefulness against such as he is, forever. Well, 
it did not, for I have done more good in the aver- 
age day since, than he did in all his parasitic life. 



XII 

A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 

AMONG the shysters my enemies secured 
to help them before the master and behind 
was one of my surname. The interests con- 
sidered him quite an asset, because the surname 
was suggestive of relationship, and, therefore, 
of lack of hostility, but rather suggestive that 
even a relative, forsooth, is against, and that, 
therefore, I must be wrong. I had not even seen 
the skunk since the preceding Christmas, when 
I addressed the church of which he and all his 
relatives were members: and he was on the com- 
mittee that had asked me to speak. He was no 
relative. And it did have such an effect before 
the newspaper-reading public: nay, even the 
court used his name for that very effect! He got 
a larger per diem than the other shysters received 
for that very reason; and one of the "justices" of 
the peace gave him a fraudulent judgment for 
some $200 — well knowing that as a matter of fact 
this shyster owed me that amount and that I 
owed him nothing. They would not dare try 
to enforce it, however. That whole coterie of 
shysters had a hand in securing that fraudu- 
lent judgment, and agreed to stand behind the 
"justice" who "rendered" it and protect him! 
And that cheap verbiage of the "Court" treated 
facts and common sense with such reckless con- 



A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 101 

tempt in its vehemence to misbrand me that 
it predicated its justification upon just such 
inconsistencies as the quoting of this biped's per- 
jurious statements. For instance: that in Sep- 
tember, 1903, I consulted him about getting a 
divorce, when that same paragraph of that same 
Court's "finding" recognizes the fact that I 
aheady had my divorce six months before Sep- 
tember, 1903: and to-day this viper points with 
pride that his name — of my surname — is printed 
in that crooked Supreme Court report. 

It is so hard and so expensive and such a task 
sincerely and truly to prepare to be useful, as 
I tried to be; and how easy it is to undo and 
destroy! What a great and good man it would 
require to be helpful in times of distress and 
persecution; and what ordinary, cheap, and con- 
temptible human skunks can make trouble 
and ruin and undo: and to think that masters 
in chancery. United States attorneys, bar asso- 
ciations and Supreme Courts would confederate 
with them and use them as weapons and means 
to justify injustice, to make wrong seem right, 
and utilize such moral dirt as their own lateral 
support! Nor is there anything more contempt- 
ible than a crooked judge who is bound to find 
a crooked verdict contrary to the evidence: for 
he usually — and all crooks are alike in that 
respect — prefaces his verdict with a finding 
of "fact," and that finding not based on the 
evidence at all, but his own invention or mis- 
construction, sometimes from nothing like a 
fact, to justify a prejudged, crooked verdict. 



102 THE BRIEF 

The master made his orders on me to appear 
before him again and to givQ him money, and his 
motions to the Court to punish me for not having 
the money to give him and for refusing to appear 
before him some more, and to ignore my defense 
therefor. I saw that the concrete idea of the 
scheme was to annoy me until I would be ex- 
hausted and unable to pay any more fines 
and be landed in jail for the lack of such funds; 
so I went to see Mr. Cartwright, the chief jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court, to tell him. He said 
he understood that the scheme was to beat me 
out of my evidence and defense and cheat the 
Court to decide against me "as by default," 
but with the more disastrous effects of its oper- 
ation against me as having had my "day in 
court," because I entered my appearance and 
had tried to defend. This judge told me that 
I need not go back to the master's thieves' 
kitchen or leave my papers with him. ''But,'' 
he added, "send to the Supreme Court copies 
of the papers you showed me. Do not send the 
originals, for you want to keep them. Send the 
copies with your brief, together with the story 
you now told me. I will look out for you." 
"No, I will not forget it." This was a very 
encouraging interview, and I obeyed. 

I made a good defense, but was cheated out of 
every chance. The master hounded me on unfair 
ground. He even made motions that witnesses 
who testified for me be punished for the con- 
tempt they had for him. The clerk of the 
Supreme Court wrote me at last that the chief 



A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 103 

justice directed him to write me that unless I paid 
what the master demanded my evidence would 
not be taken into consideration. My plea to 
it was ignored, as of course. Rush at the same 
time again demanded that I leave my copy of 
the proceedings before him as well as the papers 
I produced in evidence. He had his copy; so 
the only purpose for which he wanted mine 
was to deprive me of it. I knew, too, that if I 
left my documents with Rush I would never 
see them again: for had not these myrmidons 
broken into my oflSce twice during the pendency 
of the suit, in the hope of stealing these very 
papers .f^ I do not know whether the master 
was a member of that particular plot of bur- 
glary or not. When the police reported that my. 
oflSce was broken into, at least the papers made 
fun of it! Before the Supreme Court there 
was no use of taking issue with the master; 
for it treated me with the most utter contempt. 
I was helpless and they knew it. Behold the 
chief justice ordering the clerk to write me as he 
did after talking to me so encouragingly! And 
anon deciding against me, prefacing the judg- 
ment like this: 

"The respondent, in disregard of the order 
of this court, refused to file with the master 
a transcript of the evidence taken in behalf 
of the respondent or to pay the master his 
fees. The case was thereupon submitted to 
this court upon the evidence, briefs and ab- 
stracts in behalf of relator only,'' 



104 THE BRIEF 

The "relator" is the prosecution. The court 
well knew that the "master" had a copy of both 
the evidence and my papers. This is not all 
the lie told by the court, but it even perverted 
the evidence and added to it in order to justify 
the unclean language with which it attempted to 
stain my life, all through its "opinion." That is 
all the gratitude I got in return for all the good 
I have done for the State of Illinois ^-nd Chicago! 

I wrote to the chief justice after that, remind- 
ing him of the directions he had given me and of 
his promise to look out for me, which he had vio- 
lated. He answered that he later decided that 
the papers I had sent up were merely copies; and 
on further thought, he did not believe that the 
many high-minded lawyers would fail to stand 
by a lawyer who was persecuted. He also accused 
me of having represented him as my lawyer. 
That was false. He had warned me not to send 
originals but copies! Another judge, Carter, then 
recently appointed to that bench, whom I had 
known for years — when I wrote him asking 
if he was not afraid of God for having been a 
party to the commission of such a terrible crime 
upon me, answered that he would have me 
prosecuted for threatening his life! 

People who had known the whole proceeding 
to be a judicial farce for ulterior motives and 
a systematic persecution, organized a condem- 
nation meeting which was held in a church, 
participated in by clergymen, mechanics, busi- 
ness men and — relatives of the Starkes, one 
of the priests presiding. At that meeting, and 



A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 105 

in order to meet the words of fire with the like, 
these people passed a resolution that certain 
editors — naming them — had received moneys 
and other favors and promises in consideration 
of lying about me, that a certain judge, nam- 
ing Mack, was corrupt, that certain lawyers 
were partners to men in the business of " hold- 
ing up " and robbing pedestrians, dividing 
loots with police officials, and that certain such 
shysters have been made judges. I was not at 
that meeting at all: but the local papers re- 
ported it as a meeting called by myself, that I 
presided, and that I offered that resolution to 
a band of red-shirted socialists! 



XIII 
THE OFFICIAL LIE 

THE world was dark to me now. In vain 
did I make motion for a rehearing: the 
Court freely admitted that it would be useless, for 
had it wanted to hear me at all it would not have 
refused to pay attention to my defense in the 
first place. No other court in America would 
dare put in writing that it would not give justice 
to a party because that party had no money, 
or because it was biased: and there are judges 
that will cover up their corruption by injecting 
falsehoods into their findings for the justification 
of injustice. That was done here; except that 
here it was done with so much venom and in 
such haste that the story told and written by 
this corrupt court is self -contradictory, and very 
patently unjust. Read it! I have seen more of 
such things since — and in matters other than 
my own. Attorneys connected with the Depart- 
ment of Justice in Washington see such things 
frequently. Anyway, my friends persuaded me 
to go to Philadelphia and see what the Starke 
woman, whose name was mentioned as having 
been my wife before I married the Delahun 
girl, could do for me. I well knew that precious 
little can a tradesman's wife with ten children 
in Pennsylvania do when her cousin's evidence 



THE OFFICIAL LIE 107 

and the evidence of the New York marriage 
registry records and the evidence of scores of 
witnesses and a thousand pages of testimony 
are ignored by a court of original jurisdiction 
and last resort in Illinois in a case as im- 
portant as that, involving, as it did, a reputa- 
tion and the right to practice one's profession. 
But I had nothing more to lose, and there 
was a danger of losing the confidence of the last 
few friends left, who insisted that I go to 
Philadelphia. So these friends, busying them- 
selves to get up funds to enable my locomotion, 
immediately bought from me the last two type- 
writers I owned. The other valuables including 
thousands of volumes of books having already 
been gradually sold and sacrificed during the 
crisis while I was unable to earn, the few remain- 
ing things were stored, and I went. 

I presented my respects at the residence, on 
Front Street, of Mrs. Starke-Steenburg, with a 
note of introduction from her cousin, which she 
did not open. I asked whether she knew me. 
She told me she could neither read nor write, that 
she had heard about my having trouble on account 
of her name having been linked with mine, that 
she did not know what sin she had committed 
to be such a curse on my life, and that her 
husband had never treated her the same since the 
newspaper articles mentioned our names together, 
and detectives, lawyers and newspapermen had 
been coming to inquire in regard to her alleged 
relationships with me. Newspapers do not care 
how indelicate a story is, or whom their scandal 



108 THE BRIEF 

will drag down: all they want to know is: Is it 
sensational? — Is it legally safe to print? — If it 
is on a paper filed in court, it is generally safe, 
no matter how false. In like manner: whilst 
it is held otherwise inethical for lawyers to ad- 
vertise, if they usually file nasty papers in court, 
the newspapers will advertise them free of charge, 
of course. Lawyers make it improper for us to 
advertise. Perhaps wisdom will become known 
without shouting it on the advertising page: but 
somehow, and nevertheless, those who belong to 
"elements" always make some sorts of noises 
and put each other on committees of no work, 
for the sole ultimate purpose of getting into the 
papers — an indirect method. And if some igno- 
rant beggar licensed to practice law marries a 
millinery shop, or a saloon, or a department store 
— or anything that advertises, then the adver- 
tising managers of the newspapers see to it that 
there shall be no end to writing him up and 
advertising his wisdom. Papers call that re- 
ciprocity of patronage! Unless the advertising 
manager is first influenced by an advertising 
customer, who in turn gives his orders to the 
editorial department, nothing else is considered. 
Once I prosecuted a manager of a department 
store for assaulting a little girl who applied for a 
job, after first making an appointment that she 
see him after business hours. The defendant had 
first to be brought into a justice-shop. About 
thirty justices of the peace surrounded him. 
The hearing was postponed, and postponed. It 
was a farce. The newspapers did not notice it. 



THE OFFICIAL LIE' 109 

although the reporters brought in the reports. 
He was an advertiser, and also a patron of the 
justice-shops. Mack's partner, Pflaum, defended 
Kesner of the department store. The chief busi- 
ness of counsel for the defense was to call up the 
justices and the advertising managers of news- 
papers, to come and help. That is the way 
Mack practised law: and then his wife's people 
secured his nomination by contributing to the 
Democratic campaign fund and he became a judge 
through the political election landslide, and has 
been on some public payroll or other ever since. 
In like manner a colored man was elected to the 
superior bench some years later. The average 
voter follows the sound of a name or a party: 
there was nothing in the name to indicate that 
the candidate was a negro: nor could the Re- 
publicans afford to offend the colored voters by 
rejecting him as a candidate, nor did they ex- 
pect him to get elected. And so when the negro 
was elected, and fairly and lawfully elected, his 
friends " counted him out," in order to keep the 
peace. Voters, like sheep, fall in and follow the 
avalanche! In the Rhoades case the thousands 
of advertisers, and the advertising managers, 
were adverse, of course: because the justices of 
the peace turned thousands of their bad book- 
accounts into judgments, attachments, arrests and 
executions — and I was ruining that business of 
judicial oppression. I made the like success with 
the like system in another jurisdiction, at the like 
cost to me, of persecution and ingratitude. — But 
Humanit;^ profited: and so it was worth it. 



110 THE BRIEF 

Full of the story, I seem to diverge from the 
Front street flat in Philadelphia: The poor 
woman said that she married fifteen years ago 
and had ten children, some of which were present. 
During the conversation her husband, an elderly 
man, entered. She told him who I was and he 
immediately began to roar at me like a beast that 
is infernal and to scream and yell. I seemed too 
large to assault, although he could have thrown 
me over with very little violence just then. When 
he came to his reason he said he was glad to see 
me and that my name had haunted him for a long 
time; for whilst he had no reason to think ill 
of his wife, yet he suspected at times, for they 
say "where is smoke there is fire." It was not 
a smoke and fire affair, I assured him, but of 
liar and lie. He had my sympathy. "I am so 
thankful I saw you," he sobbed when I left. 
There was nothing the woman could do for me, of 
course; and I did not see what I came to Phila- 
delphia for. One will do a lot of gratuitous things 
on the insistence of others at such times: and 
here I was, having wasted what was then to me a 
lot of money and all that time to no purpose. 
But I felt that I must do something now that I 
was in Philadelphia. So I went to the ofi^ices of the 
prosecuting attorneys. There were two, one for 
the State and one for the County: they would di- 
rect me from Bell to Robinson, and from Robin- 
son to Bell, prosecutors of State and County re- 
spectively, and from one set of assistants to an- 
other, in each place being quizzed by numbers of 
underlings first. I "complained" that my wife 



THE OFFICIAL LIE 111 

was married to this Mr. Steenburg and that I 
wanted justice. I was a very bad complainant, 
however, for I had no marriage certificate with 
Miss Starke, nor could I give any satisfaction as 
to when and where I had married the lady. I was 
thin and emaciated, and they evidently ascribed 
my stupidity to troubles. I was told to come again 
at stated times, and that during the intervals 
they would look into the case; which they did, 
and I came. I came so often that at last, after 
I passed a big tough in an antechamber, who, 
coarse-voiced and hoarse and between chews of 
tobacco, received me with " You! Have! Been! 
Here! Before!'' I was led in; and a prosecuting 
attorney received me with — "What's the game.^ " 
Then he turned to an assistant and told him to 
hold me for mental examination. 

'''E-a-s-y," I said; "I have seen gentlemen 
like you before. I suppose you have too steady 
and easy a job to be decent to one; but give 
me a few minutes of your time and charge for 
it. I want your attention." Then he listened 
half contemptuously, while his lieutenant stood 
there as all mamelukes do, ready to do what- 
ever he was bid by his boss, in order to hold 
his job. 

I handed him a typewritten copy of the decision 
of the Supreme Court of Illinois. He read it 
patiently, and saw that the chief reason why 
they disbarred me was the mention or rather 
plausible subterfuge in it that this woman was 
my lawful wife and that as such married man 
I was wedded to Mary in Pittsburg. 



112 THE BRIEF 

"The Supreme Court of Illinois is a damned 
liar!" he roared at me, when he finished reading. 

I knew it, but that was no fault of mine. 

"Can you see the reason for my coming to see 
you.f^ " I asked. He could not. 

"I say it's a lie," he repeated. "I looked 
through the birth records of this city, and this 
woman had a child almost every year since she 
married — the only husband she ever had. Here 
are the certified copies of births in this file." 
He opened the file. It was on the table. 

"A divorce was granted against me in Pitts- 
burg, on this same allegation, that this lady is 
my wife — " 

"That's a fake, too, and a lie! " he said. 

"That's just what I am anxious to prove. 
Don't you want to prosecute her for me and give 
her a chance to prove that she never even knew 
me? It would help her — and help me." 

"On what.f^ On no better evidence than a 
fake default divorce obtained in Pittsburg.'^ Can 
I swear that I am informed and believe that she 
is a bigamist, when I know better.^ " 

"But the Illinois court respected that default 
divorce enough to disbar me." 

"That's up to them. You know as a lawyer 
that such evidence is not admissible — it is not 
primary evidence." 

"Don't you see what it means to me.^ Suppose 
I were to marry now: the same kind of courts 
would brand me as a polygamist next, and the 
newspapers make a — Mr. Bluebeard of me. If I 
am married enough to this lady to be disbarred 



TEE OFFICIAL LIE 113 

for it, then why not married enough to prosecute 
her for having another husband and vindicate — 
us both, if it is false? " 

"No, I only see what some damned courts 
amount to. They're crooked. I suppose you 
got in wrong with poHtics. I hear you've been 
on Front Street, to annoy the poor woman." 

"I just went there to meet the lady with letters 
from her cousin," I pleaded. 

"Much good it did you," he laughed. "She 
could not read the letters. 

"I realize that you're in a devil of a ^^: but 
I cannot prosecute her: what else can you sug- 
gest that I can do for you.^^ " 

"You have done it already," I said. "Give me 
those certificates of birth and all." 

Which he did, and I left. 



XIV 

THAT EDITION OF FILTH 

4 LL judges know that anything they certify 
_i\_ on the records of the court passes for truth 
not only, but is guaranteed to be the truth by the 
Constitution: all the greater is the crime in this 
case. And these parasites print their falsehoods 
with the same spirit as they did when they were 
struggling politicians and tried to blacken the 
character of their competitors; or, as some judges 
I have known, when they used to write their 
opinions of people they did not like on the walls 
of the rooms in the rear of dram-shops. 

I have had to contend with that edition of 
filth all these years since: for every time a 
shyster would not pay a reporting bill after 
having collected the amount due from his client, 
or in my law practice he was caught red-handed 
at crooked work, or wanted to gain some other 
advantage not due, he reminded me that he 
had read this falsehood and threatened to talk 
about it! It was no small struggle. 

There were times when I longed for my 
beloved vindication, my justice. I would write 
to new district attorneys in Chicago: I would 
write to the bar association, reminding it of the 
fraud it committed upon me years ago, asking 
for a chance to be heard, only to find that 



TEAT EDITION OF FILTH 115 

the curs would write to my new connections, 
advertising that printed lie. Yes, I wrote to 
some lawyers: but they saw only a chance to 
make enemies, no chance to oflfset that by making 
big money on the case — and they were mem- 
bers of the bar association. Some wrote that 
they were in consultation with officials of the 
association who promised to help them undo that 
fraud, and asked me to write to such "officials" 
thanking for their kindness. That was a mere 
trap to vindicate such crooks by my admis- 
sion that they made a mistake and are capable 
of kindness. Others answered asking that I send 
unlimited funds and ask no questions. One 
wrote that I send in affidavits to the bar asso- 
ciation to the effect that I repented and re- 
formed, asking it to have pity on me: and he 
will do the rest: and it will be all right! Some 
years ago I wrote up these adventures in greater 
detail: and in some detail the impositions, indig- 
nities, losses, shame and all which I sustained by 
reason thereof in these many years: then I wrote 
to a man named Hoyne, a recent new state's at- 
torney in Chicago, calling attention to the fraud 
and saying that I wrote it up in book form which 
I would be glad to have him read, if his office 
would want to be decent and undo that lie. Mr. 
Hoyne answered asking that I send him my 
manuscript, promising that he would take it up 
with assistants and justice would be done me. 
I sent the papers forthwith. The receipt was 
never acknowledged, and the result was that 
I never got my manuscript back, my letters for 



116 THE BRIEF 

more than a year were ignored, and the brute 
utilized the story therein told to turn it over 
to Fogle, the myrmidon of the bar association 
who wrote and kept on writing to my new friends, 
reaffirming the lie and the persecution committed 
upon me and recommending that I be further 
hounded. This is a mere additional suggestion 
of official promise in Chicago. I shall write that 
stolen manuscript over again; and maybe I will 
add something about the manner in which the 
right to fill out attachment-writs already signed 
by the courts is abused by a certain brand of 
licentiates at law and voracious constables and 
collection shops in Massachusetts, — not quite 
as bad as Chicago was, but getting pretty bad. 

In the general courts-martial, which we hear 
so much abused, the accused is entitled to counsel 
furnished by the court from among law-trained 
officers of his own choice, free of charge: one is 
entitled to be tried by his equal- or superior- 
commissioned officers only, and to a full verba- 
tim report of the proceedings for the use of the 
court and the reviewing authorities, and to a 
copy also for his own memorandum, as well as 
to the presentation of witnesses and depositions 
in his favor at public expense. — This does not 
apply to officers of a " staff ": once I saw a note 
from a governor reading: "I heard something 
about you. I won't say what or where. But I 
don't want you on my staff no longer." — Before 
each trial the members of the court and the prose- 
cuting officer, and even the reporter, are separately 
sworn to be just; and he may object to certain 



THAT EDITION OF FILTH 117 

members of the court. The commander of a 
regiment has to certify that he investigated 
the case and believes the prosecution just, be- 
fore action is brought at all. — None of your 
getting people in trouble for blackmail or in 
order to please a member of a special secret 
order, or a scorbutic politician, or a friend, or 
for a fee! And then his case, although de- 
cided by a bench of five or more officers, is 
automatically appealed to a higher court of 
trained lawyers for review and approval, modi- 
fication in his favor or reversal. No soldiers' 
home jurors there! And in spite of all that sys- 
tem, miscarriages of justice due to frivolity or 
summary power are not uncommon. 

Elements of human nature pervade the Army, 
at that. There was a golden-headed major in 
charge of a coast artillery fort who, even as junior 
officers know when they are not popular with the 
men, knew that his fellow-officers treated him only 
with the strained respect the regulations demanded. 
He would cringe to those who ranked above — and 
one of a rank below he made to feel, with undue 
emphasis, his inferiority. Officers who served with 
him were always in danger of being charged with 
crimes and misconducts by him in the general 
court. He was advanced by the seniority rule. I 
sometimes report the proceedings of the general 
courts-martial, so I made friends around him 
through the natural order of propinquity : and by 
now I ranked above him, too, in the National 
Guard. I used to care to speak no more with him 
than did others, if they could avoid him. 



118 THE BRIEF 

In the officers' cabin of the boats faring to and 
from the forts he would hear me speak with his 
fellows in languages and on subjects he knew 
nothing about, and our innocent diversions both- 
ered him. So one day he evolved the idea that 
this National Guard civilian that I was — was 
too well accepted; and he proceeded to make a 
gossip that I was a spy for a foreign government. 
His fellow-officers whispered among themselves of 
the absurdity of the slander. I knew their 
wives. I knew their children. They were my 
friends. I have been in their homes. I already 
had one bunch of lies to live down. When it 
came to my attention I traced the source. Then 
I wrote to this major upbraidingly for the 
slander, accusing liim of insubordination, and 
concluding that he was a scoundrel and a liar 
— for experience taught me that polite language 
is useless with his brand. And I am tired 
of "turning the other cheek." I used much 
stronger language, too. 

Then, Bill failing to apologize, I complained 
at the War Department. The Department made 
an investigation, and on finding that the major 
offered no better explanation for his misconduct 
than that in his opinion one of my abilities would 
not do such work as court reporting, except 
with ulterior motives, I was advised that Secre- 
tary of War Baker ordered the incident closed 
with the remark that Pinkhead Bill Chamberlain 
having called me a spy behind my back and I 
having called him a liar to his face and in the 
official files, — substantial justice was done, and 



TEAT EDITION OF FILTH 119 

no apology should be enforced. — And yet they 
say that the Administration simply acknowl- 
edges receipts of complaints, answers that they 
are referred further, and that is the end. — This 
fellow is typical of his brand: they cannot 
comprehend that one will work for the Gov- 
ernment at a financial sacrifice! How could 
one ever explain to his like that I had mort- 
gaged my holdings when the Government first 
called for aid in order to buy "Liberty" bonds 
and so help induce my friends and neighbors 
to aid the country.? And if you want to 
know where all the crooked judges and crooked 
lawyers and crooked newspapermen and other 
loafers and parasites are hatched, the answer is 
plain : any of the crooks herein depicted would still 
be crooked if they were chiefs of Government or 
Country; and the fortunes of politics are still in 
the hands of such parasites, to a large extent. 

I don't believe that any one asked Chamber- 
lain for the favor of committing the slander, 
or that he is a member of any plot; or even 
that he is a spy, as some of my friends suggest, 
who tries to cast suspicion upon others ; but rather 
that Bill is one of those accidents or mistakes 
that fall or intrude into a busy life, or into the 
corps of officers, for that matter. For, after all, 
he is on the pay-roll of the public; and, like 
many others, inefficient but ambitious to be 
noticed, throws a stone, and when confronted 
with error, like the rest of his kind he pleads 
that it was an honest mistake and "that there 
was nothing personal to it." No, they all want 



120 TEE BRIEF 

you to blame the Government for their own per- 
versity, officious obnoxiousness and dishonesty. 

In countries where duels are tolerated among 
those classified as gentlemen there is less slander, 
less insolence of office and blackmail, less back- 
biting, less stifling of justice and general reck- 
less immorality among the "better classes," and 
less official anarchy; for though a bureaucratic 
parasite know that he has power to abuse his 
discretionary or summary rights under politics 
or law, he also has the consciousness that some 
one may scratch his skin in a fight more fair and 
open than the cowardly violation of the rules of 
decency which he would fain commit: and the 
respect that such wrongs as would not come within 
the cognizance of what we technically call a 
court would thus be redressed — • for whilst it is 
true that hardly any one is ever seriously injured 
in a civilized duel, still, by reason of the thousand 
collateral advantages of the system corruption 
is reduced to a minimum where duels are allowed. 
Nor is any country worth dying, fighting, or work- 
ing for whose principal aim and glory is not a 
system of sincere and fair actual justice for every 
one alike, for there are plenty of highminded men 
who feel that a lie cannot be borne without 
satisfaction except by a base-born churl; and 
every one at least pretends that a fair fight is 
more manly than a stab in the back. Duels 
would still be subject to regulation by law as 
are all things. And even if the system would 
bring about a scar to an occasional aggrieved 
party, it would, on the other hand, also render 



THAT EDITION OF FILTH 121 

public the report of the reason of the conflict. 
It is better that occasionally one who is in the 
right, even, be scathed in a cause that is just, 
if at the same time he brand and stigmatize a 
criminal against whom there is no written law 
or whom the rules of evidence cannot reach, 
than that people should continue to be robbed 
and justice miscarried in a pretext at good law, in 
the name of the other people — the good citizens 
of the State — who know nothing about it, and 
asylums be filled with unfortunates housed in 
padded cells because they could not fathom, 
comprehend, or brook that corruption is justice, 
and poverty crime, and that courts which you are 
taught to consider just help wring away your 
right and property because you cannot spend 
any more money on blackmail and fines and 
masters in chancery who are corrupt in tribu- 
nals where justice is judicially miscarried: and, 
as also truly related in the manuscript which 
State's Attorney Hoyne stole, that people should 
be punished because they protect the orphan and 
the just against criminal threats, and demands 
of organized shysters, encouraged by *' judges" 
of unlimited jurisdiction; for people refuse to 
believe that courts are not meant to be fair, 
and honest people not to be free about their 
legitimate affairs. Nor is there one who would 
not rather fall — yes and die — like a man, 
in a fair face-to-face conflict, than be deprived 
of reputation, right, property and all by licensed 
political anarchy and judicial dastardy. Nor 
would manslaughters be so common among the 



122 THE BRIEF 

respectable class who kill not to rob and steal but 
to avenge wrongs for which there is no prompt 
redress at what we are taught to call law: and it 
is generally admitted, too, that cowardly black- 
mails, libels, slanders, judicial-, political-, shyster-, 
and general corruption and unfair influence are 
most rampant in those countries in which duels 
are not tolerated. 

The new general military law should, if made 
permanent, tend for better citizens, better jurors, 
a better country. I don't know about better 
lawyers: except that a son of a decent woman 
will try to be an honest man, no matter what 
his occupation — which is probably another way 
of saying that all good men are so because they 
had good mothers. Perhaps, while departing to 
the subject military, it is well to suggest that 
assurances that in public callings men of such 
training are to be preferred would tend for a bet- 
ter race not only, but eliminate the necessity of 
teaching hatred by false reports of the enemy in 
times of war — which does not, really, stimulate 
voluntary enlistments as much as patriotism 
coupled with an interest: and patriotism is as 
much made up of the gratitude you owe the State 
for its bounties and protection as of the instinct 
to shield the home, — natural ties and obedience 
to the laws: and the reciprocity the Government 
owes for good citizenship, as also politicians for their 
salaries, is a clean government for everyone and a 
guarantee of justice. Mock-statesmanship, licensed 
corruption, favoritism and criminal immunity make 
for contempt of government and anai^chy. 



XV 

RASCALS AT LAW 

AMR. BANCROFT was the leading villain 
of the '* grievance committee" of the bar 
association called to undo me, arguing that I was 
a growing power and a menace to the corrupt 
status quo of Chicago. About ten years later I 
again had occasion to see some of his doings, and 
no wonder he feared me. He was now engaged 
as one of the many lawyers in the Harvester 
case, and his special assignment was to organize 
the most influential politicians of the West at the 
expense of the trust for the purpose of running to 
Attorney-General Wickersham and begging him 
not to print the names of the owners of the hun- 
dred million dollars' worth of stock in Volume IV 
of the evidence and suppress that the majority 
of the stockholders of that enormous wealth failed 
to schedule the property in the sworn statements 
they filed under the income-tax law; and well 
do I remember the desperate, frantic begging 
letters he had written to Washington and the 
trips he and his fellows had made. The Gov- 
ernment's counsel declining to participate, in 
spite of all that influence, in the corrupt sup- 
pression of facts, Bancroft went to " work " 



124 THE BRIEF 

upon the Illinois politicians and succeeded in 
securing the immunity for himself and others 
who had perjured themselves year after year 
to rob the Government. 

And "lawyers" of this caliber had the power to 
pick me to pieces, by bombarding what they knew 
to be my only base of supplies, the right to work. 
Nor will I ever forget a trip through the country 
some years ago, when the McNamara dynamiting 
case was pending in California. All through 
that trip, from the train I saw workmen parade 
the streets of the cities, carrying large placards 
reading "Justice for the McNamaras" — and 
they did stick to their fellow- workers to the end: 
— and I could not help meditating how much 
higher a group of men and more noble was organ- 
ized labor than my colleagues of the law, who, 
instead of declaring so conspicuously a demand 
for justice for one like me, tacitly, treacherously, 
and criminally organized, conspired, combined and 
confederated for purposes of injustice and judicial 
rape. And for years after I had come back to 
the region of more civilization and culture, have 
these human whelps and hounds sent broad- 
cast nasty libels about me and lies. And the more 
they have been lying, the more did my neighbors 
feel inclined to inquire and investigate, and the 
more did they shower me with help and honors, 
for which I shall ever remain thankful. 

Nor must a very recent adventure be left out. 
Captain F. S. Long of the Coast Artillery Corps 
of the United States Army, stationed at Fort 
Revere, sent me a client. He was a corporal in 



RASCALS AT LAW 125 

my friend's company, married a few months 
before. The corporal and his commander were 
sent letters by a Pennsylvania lawyer accusing 
the young man of the paternity of a child. It 
seemed from the story that the young farmer's 
son joined the Army in order to escape the perse- 
cution. The corporal brought his wife with him 
to my office. I told the young man that those 
nasty cases are usually stigmatizing, whether the 
accused won or lost, and I told the wife that 
his chances of getting out of the scrape were 
better if she stood by him; and that if she did 
mean to go "back on him," to do that after 
the mess would be over. — See what an expert 
I wsis? — She said she would stick. 

I took the files of correspondence and threats 
and demands of money from both the Captain 
and the client. I started out by looking up 
the lady and traced her whereabouts for some 
six years back, within which time she was already 
reported to have made two money settlements 
with young men just married. Beyond the six 
years I had no clew, so I wrote to a local lawyer 
to have the woman photographed. On receiving 
a small snapshot, the visage looked rather familiar; 
and on applying to it a ten-diopter biconvex 
magnifier, more so. I looked long and hard, 
wondering where I saw that face before — when 
behold, I seemed to see her at Mr. Delahun's 
desk, where I first saw her in the distant past: 
the very one whom Mr. Delahun furnished 
with counsel and my money to follow me to 
Chicago. Then an easy way occurred of ascer- 



126 THE BRIEF 

taining whether it was she: and I wrote upon 

my stationery to the lady's counsel: 

"Be good enough to show this letter to 
your fair client and tell her that I represent 
the defendant. Tell the lady to read rny 
name carefully." 

That was more than two years ago, and neither 
Captain Long nor his corporal nor I heard any 
more of the case; and I advised my client and 
his wife that I had written one letter and expected 
that that would just about put an end to their 
trouble with the lady in Pennsylvania. Even if 
it was the same lady, there was no use of telling 
the client how many bucketfuls of tears shed in 
years past had cost me the success of his little 
case. 

Nor do I begrudge that another lady in Pennsyl- 
vania displayed jewels of my family and mine 
to friends she made in the new neighborhood 
and represented them sometimes as heirlooms 
of her own and other times as gifts from grateful 
pupils at music. Nay, in these j^ears there have 
been times when I mused about her as a victim 
of the wiles of her father, who had told her artful 
lies which she believed: and I have wondered 
how she often must have thought of me with 
pity and remorse in cogitation as to that scoun- 
drel's good faith to her or bad; and how she 
must herself be waiting for a day when the whole 
truth would be plain — until the 26th of June, 
1916, when I was in Pittsburg on other matters, 
and recollection of the series of outrages and pro- 



RASCALS AT LAW 127 

pinquity drew me to attempt a call, only to find 
a woman weatherbeaten, harsh-voiced, and ear- 
marked with the character perfectly consistent 
with what she had done to me and to others 
since, and to find, too, that so far from the re- 
morse and the pity of it all she had since then 
landed and ridded men, and enforced her rights 
at law, and was now looking for new conquests. 
I saw and heard her now with matured eyes and 
ears such as I did not possess in that early age, 
and a great awakening and relief it was to my 
hounded soul. Her father, like herself, is older 
now by seventeen years, and her mother a hope- 
less invalid — the moneys of mine that her father 
was to hold for me and those he borrowed from 
me and those she appropriated have long since 
vanished, the whole family barely existing with 
the help of others. 

A member of their church, under date of Feb- 
ruary 12, 1917, writes: 

"As I have told you before, I have had a 
personal dislike for Delahun for many years, 
both instinctively and now since I know of 
his baseness. I rode out on the street car the 
other night and he seated himself with me 
and started to talk about church matters. 
I told him abruptly that I was reading my 
paper and did not care to talk with him. 

"I asked a friend of mine that I knew 
knew his daughter well, who said: *Poor 
Mary, she has a hard time of it.' 'How so.^' 
I queried. ' Oh, don't you know? ' she replied; 



128 THE BRIEF 

*then let us not say more.' Another friend 
of mine of whom I made inquiry said, *Who 
told you to ask me?' 'No one,' I said, 'why?' 
'Oh, nothing, only you are the fifth person 
in two days speaking to me regarding her;' 
and we let the matter drop. 

"I did inquire further and did find out 
some: and my report to you is: 'Poor Mary; 
she has had a hard time; let's say no more;' 
and yet what she has been up to very lately 
I can only conjecture." 

In reply I wrote my friend to find some reli- 
able way to help her with funds from me without 
disclosing their source. 

And I am so thankful that the Fates willed it 
thus, for I had rather have been the humble 
messenger of all this light if it served any good 
purpose than the unawakened companion of the 
one behind all this — my Brief. 



EPILOGUE 

"... For if he show us his wounds and tell 
us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into 
those wounds and speak for them. So if he 
tell us his noble deeds, ive must also tell him 
our noble acceptance of them, ..." 

— Shakespeare. 



